


Sulahn'nehn's Rise

by astrakhan



Series: Vir Sulahn'nehn [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon with Extra Bits, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Dragon Age Lore, Dragon Age Spoilers, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Elf Rebellion, Elven Glory, Elven Lore, Eventually Smutty, F/M, Fade Sex, Fade Tongue, Fenedhis, Gen, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Minor Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Oral Sex, POV Solas, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Solas Perspective, Solavellan, Spoilers, Sweet/Hot, Virginity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:12:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3110795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrakhan/pseuds/astrakhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas watches from the sidelines as Sulahn'nehn Lavellan, song-mage in service to Sylaise, slowly loses her faith and comes into her own power, learning to walk her own path. Against his better judgement, they fall in love, while she attempts to forge a new empire for the elves. He can't bear to tell her why he thinks that will be a bad idea in the future, for his plans must remain a great secret...</p><p>Canon to game plot-line and lore, with plenty of added head-canon. There are scattered NSFW Solavellan scenes. You have been warned. </p><p>*Major Spoilers* for Dragon Age: Inquisition!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Song of Valor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas meets Sulahn'nehn properly for the first time, as he watches her skillfully start to use his mark against the rifts in combination with her own talents. Solas slightly approves.

The first time he saw her awake, she was fierce. She ran fleet-footed down the steps toward the rift and its enemies, light and lithe, rift-green eyes gleaming with the wide eyed abandon of a powerful young fire mage who had never encountered such an impossible object. As he easily cast his barriers on her, the jovial dwarf, and the Seeker from aside, he watched with knowing sorrow as she confidently sent powerful blasts of fire at the demons, almost dancing as she cast her spells. 

A fitting talent, given the vibrant crimson slave markings that covered most of her sweet young face. The folly of the Dalish and their mistaken customs. She was clearly accustomed to her power, confident in her abilities. She was young, pretty. Possibly intelligent, although he had not yet hear her speak. Cassandra had given her name as Sulahn'nehn when he took charge of her care, though horribly mispronounced, as to be expected.

 _Rejoice in song_. An agreeable name, likely taken from _In Uthenera na Revas_ , one of the many songs the Dalish had managed to remember the melody and lyrics to without preserving the actual spirit of the song. It was once a song sung to those entering uthenera, as it was once sung for him. But the elves no longer lived long enough to enter the peace of uthenera. They deserved to experience it again.

Little Sulahn'nehn deserved better, certainly more than the markings of a slave. She even deserved better than the mortality he had accidentally bestowed upon their struggling People. But he could do nothing but add his guilt for her to the growing wolf-shaped abyss of regret, his negative aspect, that trailed his very step.

He quietly watched as the first wave of demons eased and she momentarily relaxed. She must have thought this was the only problem here. She would surely have defeated small numbers of demons before. She smiled and leaned on her staff when it appeared the demons were gone, but immediately looked shocked and crestfallen, changing to a determined fighting stance as yet another wave of demons appeared with a flash. She had no idea how many they would fight, how many he had fought in vain until she awoke.

And no wonder. After all, he himself had watched as she endlessly twitched in fitful sleep as the sky itself crumbled around her. She had missed the repercussions of his mistake, trapped clueless in the Fade through his own divine power, unable to ever return. She could not travel it as he could. She should not have been the one to receive the orb’s gift. He knew, though the others could not. She could not possibly escape the Fade on her own, and he could not physically reach her without the power she had accidentally trapped in her hand. Another great mistake he could never begin to fix, no matter how much he tried.

He had come to these rifts many times before, and left defeated, forced to flee as the vile things emitted more twisted spirits in waves with no hope of stopping as long as the rift existed. He could once have easily removed them all with a snap of his will, but that gift was taken from him now, thanks to Corypheus’s greed for power over others, and thanks to his own pride in allowing Corypheus to begin the ancient rituals to unlock the orb.

But the blast of Corypheus’s inelegant human magic ripped a chasm from the mortal world through the fade, pulling kind and gentle spirits in until they were forced through to another world, scared, angry, afraid. Those poor things. He had caused so much hurt to the Fade creatures he loved, twisted in purpose until they became what the shemlen called demons. Once corrupted by the rift, the only thing he could do for them was ease their pain by destroying them.

He always felt deeply and silently guilty in the presence of the rifts, and indeed the shemlen elves he was responsible for creating through his insufferable pride. Pride that his age-old task of sealing away the gods and endless time so the mortals could live their lives in peace was the right thing to do. Pride in assuming that Corypheus would not be able to survive the power of the orb like he himself would have, as he had planned, once he took it from Corypheus’s weak mortal body.

_Solas._ The name and aspect he rightly took on, a reminder of what led him astray. He was so disgustingly prideful to think none but the ancient elvhen such as him could wield such magic and yet survive, and here were two mortals in front of his very eyes who did. One an ancient and skilled magister, and one a reasonably talented little elf mage. Neither mortal should have been able to handle this power. One least of all.

Somehow, through a vile Blighted magic he did not expect, Corypheus had risen again, taken the orb and left, before his ancient physical body could even move. He was so weak, so tired, so unused to this mortal form, his arms barely moving as he exerted his will. The thing jumped into a nearby dusty husk of an elvhen corpse, grotesquely changing it into its tall spiky form.

Corypheus, blight-tainted Magister, more monster than man. And this ordinary little shemlen elf, mage though she may be. New holders of the divine power of Fen’Harel, granted by the constellation Fenrir itself. He was nothing more now than the fade-touched mage he was as a boy. Pride led him astray every time.  
The pretty little Dalish girl with the red hair and slave markings dedicated to the temple of Sylaise was, somehow, still alive, but so was the blighted magister Corypheus, and he would surely kill her to attempt to take the key back. One last thing he could try to prevent. Of course, killing her or trying to siphon the magic would never work. It had bound itself to her spirit.

Somehow, against all possible odds, she had awakened, and arrived in fighting spirit to combat the rifts, but she had no idea what to do with her real power. The small red-headed da’len, so incredibly young compared to him, accidentally forced to wield such a gift. She held the key in her hand, like a toddler who picked up the key to the kingdom and stashed it away.. She survived it, like Corypheus. Now she needed a guide.

The second wave of demons quelled, the rift transformed. All went quiet as the rift slowly gathered more energy. Mehlana sahlin. Time had come. This was their only chance to seal the rift: the short time in which it needed to regenerate. He knew that much from fighting them, at least. He walked to her swiftly, grasping her marked hand firmly.

“Quickly! Before more come through!” he shouted urgently, thrusting her hand toward the breach. She followed his lead, allowing the energy in her hand to surge outward toward the rift. And then everything changed. In a great flash, the rift was sealed, and Fen’Harel knew there was a way to fix this mistake. If this one could be sealed, so could others. And, with more power and training, the Breach itself. This da’len held more power than she could possibly imagine in the palm of her left hand.

She pulled her hand from his grip, her face shocked, distrusting, clearly unsure of of the broad-shouldered egg-headed elf who had just grabbed her out of nowhere and sealed the rift. She had seemingly not noticed him during the fight.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice quiet with suspicion. “I did nothing,” he replied, smiling, “the credit is yours.”

She looked down at her hand with dawning comprehension. “You mean this?”

He could not admit his true role. He had to be as vague as possible if he wanted this child who held the key to his power to trust him. She was Dalish, after all. They had their ridiculous superstitions about him, traditions that would lead her to cast him aside without a moment’s thought. It would be better if he took the role of the scholar, who reached great understanding through study. That would be a feat comprehensible to these mortal souls.

“Whatever magic placed the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand,” he began. “I theorized the mark might be able to close the rifts that have opened in the breach’s wake- and it seems I was correct.”

“Meaning it could also close the Breach itself!” said the Seeker, walking closer.

“Possibly” he replied, smiling, clasping his hands together to keep from revealing the cost of the magic it would require to close the breach. For her to gain the power necessary to close the giant Breach, so many of his Fade friends had to die. And if she did not kill them, and tried to close the Breach, she would surely die. But it was not untrue; there _was_ a possibility. He smiled at the Lavellan girl, ancient eyes crinkling in genuine relief. _Enasal_ , joyful relief after struggle. “It seems you hold the key to our salvation.”

“Good to know!” said his new dwarf friend Varric, walking up after he adjusted his gloves. Confident as always, he strode immediately up to the elf girl and introduced himself.

“Varric Tethras. Rogue, storyteller and occasionally unwelcome tagalong, ” he said, winking at Cassandra. He did tease her so.

The elf girl seemed to warm to his confidence. “That’s a nice crossbow you have there,” she said pleasantly as she gestured at the device.

“Ah, isn’t she?” grinned Varric, gazing at his weapon. “Bianca and I have been through a lot together.”

“You named your crossbow Bianca?” the elf laughed, eyebrows twitching in amusement.

“Of course. and she’ll be great company in the valley” replied the dwarven rogue.

Cassandra strode toward them authoritatively. “Absolutely not. Your help is appreciated, Varric, but—“

“Have you been in the valley lately, Seeker?” Varric interjected.”Your soldiers aren’t in command any more. You need me.” Varric smiled as Cassandra snorted in disgust and strode away.

That was enough talk of Varric. He always did manage to command the limelight. It was a useful trait in a partner, when trying to remain unnoticed in comparison. But it was time this da’len noticed the one whose power she wielded. She could not know his true name, of course. But she could know him by his true face, by the folly that took from her everything that she could have been owed. He smiled at her broadly.

“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live.” His boisterous friend Varric interjected, yet again.

“He means, ‘I kept that mark from killing you while you slept.’” A little obvious for his taste, but it was the truth.

The young girl turned to him, smiling. She must still feel weak enough to appreciate his care. “Then I owe you my thanks,” she said shyly. She was polite to strangers, that was clear. An admirable quality. But if she did not have the power to close the Breach, she would surely die.

“Thank me if we manage to close the breach without killing you in the process” the one who called himself Solas replied, turning to Cassandra to warn her, too. “The magic involved here is unlike any I have seen,” he lied. “Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such power.” He could not admit to knowing its true origins without giving himself away. No mortal would know such secrets.

It was enough for Cassandra. “Understood,” she nodded. “We must get to the forward camp quickly” the Seeker said, striding ahead. 

“Well, Bianca’s excited!” said Varric as the others straggled on.

As he walked with her, he observed her from afar, trying to determine if there was some special quality to her that allowed her to escape the Fade and wake up. He had studied her in her sleep enough to rule out any sort of possession, and she seemed to be a reasonably ordinary young Dalish elf, if indeed particularly graceful and gifted in the explosive arts.

But Solas had seen thousands of such elves in the temples of Sylaise long ago, the same tendril-like markings adorning their faces as they sang and danced to send the songs of the Gods resonating through the Veil. The beauty of their songs invited friendly spirits to cross the Veil, who played alongside them on instruments the bard-mages conjured from controlled veilfire to honor the old music from which all life came and which all living things adore. 

This little girl knew nothing of such glorious power and elven majesty, even in her attempt to imitate their teachings. Her people had forgotten so much, in the thousand years since he last awoke. He pitied her in her enthusiasm, but regretted the darkest knowledge that howled at him from his very soul: that all that had befallen them, that he detested them and pitied them for, was his fault.

The man who called himself Pride felt that rare emotion again the third time Sulahn’nehn fought a rift alongside him. Now they faced terrors, ghastly shrieking nightmares that knocked even a warrior from their very feet. The young elven mage handled them without fear, sidestepping to let Cassandra attack her pursuers in order to disrupt the rift itself and weaken them all. She was quick to learn, this da’len

But this time, she sang while she cast her spells, a talent not usually displayed by mages in combat or otherwise. It was an art he had not seen practiced in hundreds of years of walking the Fade. The song was simple, but plaintive, an old song in elven whose lyrics spoke of struggle but filled him with courage. He noticed his attacks suddenly increasing in power as the song warmed his spirit.

Her voice was so beautiful. He was almost certain he had heard it before- but from where? The fade? Her sweet soprano resonance plagued him with a hidden memory, even as she ceased to sing and focused on instead hurling fireballs at the demons that came in a second surge.

She began a new song, green eyes flashing catlike in the shadows, her lilting voice ringing out with determination now. A song of valor, although its lyrics spoke of sorrow. The music filled them all with energy and they all increased the frequency of their assault, Sulahn’nehn most of all, her fleet of foot seemingly increased by the sheer magic around her as she danced through the demons and flung orbs of fire around the field.

It was a useful talent, there was no question- the song was infectious, bouncing in his head long after she resumed her spell casting in pursuit of yet another wave of rift demons, filling him with renewed strength and vigor.

As soon as the demons were cleared, she moved toward the rift like a new dance partner she had yet to approach, her delicate marked arm outstretched in confidence. She was already making a habit of this dance, without any knowledge of its true meaning and power. Already molding her new skills into her time-honored, graceful and practiced art.

Like before, she successfully closed the rift, jerking her hand away in time from the bond of magic that connected the anchor to the tear, still stopping to stare bewildered at her own hand as though she wasn’t quite sure if she was in control. He had to reassure her, if she were indeed to stay in control.  
“Sealed, as before. You are becoming quite proficient at this.” He gave her a small nod of approval, a mote of admiration barely concealing the interest in this intelligent young woman already growing in the back of his mind.

“Let’s hope it works on the big one,” added Varric from below.

It was not long before they reached the Temple of Sacred Ashes, rebuilt again and again to honor so many gods. First Mythal. Then Dumat, Mythal’s twisted aspect, as that dreaded wolf that followed him everywhere was to him. And now Andraste, of whom he could not bear to think without deepest regret. All of these had brought all of them here. 

Solas came for Mythal's power, the late Divine for her Conclave, Corypheus for Dumat. It lay yet again in interminable ruin, spikes of corrupted rock and lyrium emerging from the screaming ground. Solas kept his pace with the others in measured patience, but the younger elf skipped ahead, gawking in horror and awe at the size of the Breach that hovered above them. 

“The Breach is a long way up” remarked Varric, joining her in head-tilted fixation.

Solas cleared his aura and prepared himself as Leliana and Cassandra arranged battle formations. Sulahn’nehn was still staring at the Rift when Cassandra stepped in front of her.

“This is your chance to end this. Are you ready?” she demanded. Sulahn’nehn sighed, gesturing at the hovering rift in mock despair. 

“I’m assuming you have a plan to get me up there?” she asked. Solas knew he had to speak now, lest Cassandra issue a futile plan that would kill them all. He was the only one who knew enough of the rifts and the Breach to close them, although he had lost the power himself. They did not need to know that. Nor did they need to attack the Breach directly, not yet.

“No. This rift was the first, and it is the key,” said the Dread Wolf in sheep’s clothing, hiding his intentions while furthering his own ends. He meant well for them all, and knew what had to be done. But could he save them if this plan went awry? If history was any prophet…

He could not think of that now. He could only undo what had been done. “Seal it, and perhaps we seal the Breach.” He frowned at the great rift, lying half-dormant in crystalline protrusions. Even this effort could still kill the blessed child. It had been hours since she awoke.

“Then let’s find a way down, and be careful,” said the Seeker. He would allow her the role of general, although he had commanded armies for ages older than mountains. It would be better if he led from the shadows. Cassandra led the way as the group forged a path down the ruins toward the rift. Echoes from the Fade surrounded them as they walked, lyrium-infused stones glowing as they passed by. The echoes and noises emanating from the lyrium unnerved Varric and Cassandra, but not Sulahn’nehn, who listened with keen interest.

They heard fragments of Corypheus’s blood magic ritual, but Solas was unable to discern how it was that the elf girl had come by the orb, except that she had somehow entered the ceremony itself. Perhaps that was it. In a miraculous manner of timing, she had entered the room just in time for the activated orb to seek a worthier soul to grant the key to the _enansal_ , the blessing.

He listened as hard as he could to the echoes as the Seeker interrogated the young girl again behind him, demanding to know what she was seeing. How could the child have possibly known? Solas spoke up on her behalf, admitting as much as he could without betraying how much he truly knew.

“Echoes of what happened here. The fade bleeds into this place,” Solas spoke, turning. “This rift is not sealed, but it is closed… albeit temporarily. I believe that with the mark, the rift can be opened, and sealed properly and safely. However, opening the rift will likely attract attention from the other side.” He gazed at Lavellan as he spoke, who was seemingly very interested in what he had to say. 

“That means DEMONS! Stand ready!” shouted Cassandra hoarsely to her gathered troops as a pride demon emerged. Ah. Here was a creature who would truly understand him.

“Now! Do it!” shouted the Seeker, as an injured Sulahn’nehn Lavellan scrambled toward the rift, straining to stand as she thrust her arm to the sky. Solas watched with first gentle pride for the elf, then concern, as the rift sucked in her power. For a moment, it appeared inert. Suddenly it burst with a great flash, the gash in the sky opening wide and gleaming before slamming shut like a mouth that tasted bitter herbs, but Solas had no luxury of _enasal_ , the relief that comes after struggle, after this victory.

The pretty little singer mage, bearing a power far too strong for her mortal body, lay unconscious, not quite dead but utterly drained. Her skinny limbs splayed on the ground in an uncomfortable pile, and curled beside her, black as the void, invisible to all others, snarling at him with six furious, accusing scarlet eyes, lay a wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sulahn'nehn is a bard-mage (dirthenera) which basically just means she has the Bard specialization from DA:O as well the regular mage ones in DA:I.
> 
> The songs Sulahn'nehn likes to use in combat:  
> "Song of Courage" sounds like the tavern song ["Nightingale's Eyes"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cin4etTJiwk) with the lyrics for "Suledin" on the DA wiki.
> 
> "Song of Valor" sounds like the tavern song ["I am the One" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__hStdzoYVk)
> 
> Chapter 3 explains how they become tavern songs!


	2. Song of Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Sulahn'nehn closes the First Rift, Solas gets to know her for the first time without revealing anything about himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is game canon except the stuff about Sulahn'nehn's other clans, dirthenara/their powers/Dal'Sulahn etc, and song magic, which is my head canon and is developed throughout this fanfic.

It was three days before she woke again, although her forecast this time was less dire than the last. The commanders had refused to allow him to study her again while she recovered, and he resigned himself to spending more time in the Fade and, if he had to spend more time on mortal soil to steel himself, musing on the mysteries of the Fade by the porch of his door. All to quell his fear that something would keep her from waking, that she would be yet another noble elven soul lost to him. When she awoke, he discovered the fact indirectly, through the excited hope that permeated Haven in her wake as she went to visit Cassandra. 

Her name and title were on the tip of every tongue that passed him as he relaxed by his quarters. He was glad, so glad that she had recovered yet again, but curtailed his desire to approach her directly to express this sentiment. Propriety was still necessary in these difficult times. He chose the path of patience, waiting in his quarters until the time when she herself chose to come to him. And that very day, amidst the burden of her duties, she stopped by his quarters. She looked well-rested but nervous, greeting the others around her sweetly but shying from their reverent adulations.  
  
She wanted them to treat her like a person. That would have been difficult enough for an elf in these times, but she had now been raised to a religious ideal. The Herald of Andraste. A strange title to bestow upon a Dalish priestess, fiery tendrils emblazoned on her face as real fire danced from her apostate staff, in every way a being they would have distrusted and feared. The shemlen cared not for reality when they sought a savior that fit their religious mold. 

He had no doubt the girl herself did not credit Andraste for her gift, nor for releasing her from the fade's bounds as some powerful creature must surely have done. She came to him with a look of joyful relief, a friend who would finally treat her as an equal and not a prophet. 

“Aneth ara, hahren,” she said happily, her voice lilting gaily as she approached. “How have you been?” 

Solas appreciated the gesture of honor in her title for him, noting with amusement the literal truth of the words. “I am well, da’len. It is perhaps you who has the more interesting answer. Are you feeling better after closing the great rift beneath the Breach?” 

“I had the sails knocked from my aravel, but I’ll be fine,” smiled the young Dalish elf, crimson curling around her features as her eyes glittered in the depths of her honest display of emotion. “I came to ask about you, though.”  


“Me, da’len?” the wolf smiled through his teeth, cursing his inability to be forthright with this sweet child. No matter what she asked, he would have to lie. Or find a way to tell a half-truth instead, which was in essence no better. 

“I've been wondering about you. Where are you from? I know you’re not Dalish, you have no vallaslin and no clan that you speak of. And you don’t talk or act like a city elf. You do respect the old ways, I can see that.”

“I am elvhen, no more,” he replied flatly. “I grew up in a village far from any alienages or Dalish camps, and learned to explore the Fade on my own.” Not far from the truth, but not true in the way she would have imagined it. 

There were indeed no alienages or Dalish camps when he grew up. And the world of his childhood surged with magic, invited him in, yearned in its entirety to teach him to explore itself. He had no need of tutors to learn to travel the Fade consciously in dreams, for it came to him as naturally as walking. 

“Hmm.” The Lavellan girl pursed her reddened lips, arching a delicate eyebrow as she opened her mouth to speak. “I don’t know any small villages that would let elves or even mages live there, personally. The smaller the village, the more hostile to elves and mages they seem to be, and you are both.”  


“My village was welcoming to all life,” replied the ancient elf testily. 

“But tell me about your clan. Where did you learn such song-magic? It is quite rare, is it not?” 

He was indeed curious how a quickling Dalish elf in the Dragon Age came by such an old practice; he wondered if she even knew what she was, what she would have been in the glorious days. Her vallaslin hinted at a correctness in attribution, but he could not be sure she had chosen it willingly. 

“Not in clan Lavellan, that’s for sure,” Sulahn’nehn replied wryly. “I was given to that clan when I was twenty-one. I’ve only been a member for five years.” 

“What do you mean, given?” asked Solas, unable to conceal his surprise. Were the Dalish conducting slavery again? After all he had wrought to free them?

“At the Arlath’vhen, every ten years. The clan I was born into, Atish’an, is known for keeping the secrets of the dirthenara, singer-teacher-historian-healers who travel among the People to bring wisdom. I was one of nine young mages in training. They didn’t need me around. My brother's hunting was much more precious to them. Plus, every clan has to trade a treasure at the great meeting, and they have an ancient artifact they’d never give up." 

As she spoke, she absent-mindedly kicked the ground, clearing a smooth, flat surface beneath her.  
  
"They gave me to clan Vhen’durgen at the Arlath’vhen of the Blood Moon. I was eleven, the same year I chose my vallaslin. The other clan gave them ten masterwork aravels in exchange, which they had no idea how to build. Vhen’durgen were a clan dedicated to June, so I grew up quietly learning their secrets of crafting from aside while maintaining my role as their dirthenara,” said the girl, kicking a small barrier glyph into the sand with her feet as she spoke. 

“I’m surprised to see a dirthenara in the present day,” Solas murmured absently. He had not expected that the ancient term for Sylaise’s priestesses would be preserved alongside their arts, or that an elf so young could even pronounce the word so correctly. He had noticed that when she sang in combat, as well; her elvhen was more accurate in intonation and inflection than any Dalish he had met, although she was not fluent to its meaning or script. He wondered who had taught her, who had taught them, how nothing had been lost in between as all other things had. “The practice was said to die with time.”  


“Most clans don't have one, it's easier to train a hearthkeeper, and there are too few skilled enough to call dirthenara to go around. Atish'an are mostly self-sufficient, and they jealously guard their secrets even from those in the clan not allowed to train in song. They only ventured out of the forests in the west for the Arlath'vhen. We all knew that meant the best of us would have to leave." 

Solas understood how their existence had escaped his reach; they covetously kept to themselves, denying their own people the glories they protected at the cost of one honed, shining soul every decade. A defensive, but antisocial strategy. He supposed other such clans in inherited service to the other gods may exist, if he had failed to notice this one. Her second clan kept the secrets of June, after all. He stored the knowledge in the back of his mind for the future. It would be good to have elvhen who knew the old arts on his side when his plans came to pass. 

"How did clan Atish'an maintain the old ways so well?" he asked. 

Sulahn'nehn straightened, fully aware of the correct response to give, slowing her cadence even as she tried consciously not to sing the words. 

"We remember the legend of radiant Bellanera, the last High Keeper of the Great Temple of Sylaise, whose aria commanded great spirits of valor who fought for the love of her voice. She sang the song of Sylaise until the end of time while the grand temple of light itself sank into the endless void. She succumbed to the quickening, singing to the very end, but her daughters took up the endless chant, proclaiming the majesty of Sylaise's blessings. Of fire, that which warms and protects, of the beauteous arts, that which soothes the spirit, and of healing, that which refreshes life. Bellanera gave us the blessed Staff of Singers, Dal'Sulahn, which once belonged to wisest Sylaise herself, a blessing granted in her divine kindness. Her daughters followed the Vir Atish'an to the end, following the path of peace on the long journey all People now tread.”

Her words were measured and practiced, a tale she had heard and retold countless times before. Solas was alarmed at the depth of truth hidden in her practiced speech, but remained consumed by reproach for the Dalish and the parts of the past they chose to seek out over others. 

He hated their obsession with submission, endlessly allowing the compulsive whims of one irrational being to control their lives even after their gods could no longer hear them. He had worked so hard to free them from their bounds, and here they were, stunted descendants of slaves, willingly trading away the lives of their own children for menial commodities the way the slave markets of Arlathan he once ravaged had.

“And this alleged staff is the artifact which is so much more precious to your blood-clan than life, that they could give you away as a child without a moment’s thought?” Solas asked her curtly, a quiet note of bitterness in his gentle, lilting voice. “Are any of you even sure of its true origin?” 

“I hadn’t really thought about it, or tried not to, I guess. It hurts to, a little. And they haven’t been _my clan_ in twenty years” she sighed, gazing up at him ruefully with wide green eyes. 

She was so much smaller than him. Even his People’s children had been larger and more robust than her people were now; they looked like underfed orphans, the lot of them. And, in his experience, many he encountered had acted like underfed wolves. 

But not this da’len. She was taught the old ways, respected them, understood their principles enough to modify her new powers to fit her fighting style. And even in her inherited smallness, she carried the delicate curves of her figure with grace, approaching others with empathy. He was impressed by her, although he was too shy to admit it directly. 

And now he had caused her pain; her demeanor had already changed as she distracted herself with unpleasant memories. In private, her emotions flickered across her face with the abandon of an ever changing flame. He was glad, at least, that in his presence, she slackened her defenses enough to remove the neutral, emotionless mask she often wore around the others.

“I am sorry if I offended you with my impudence, da’len,” he said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder as steel blue eyes gazed into rift green. 

“You didn’t create the system,” she said dismissively, shaking her head and breaking her gaze to look at her drawing on the ground. "Anyway, I haven’t thought about my old clans in years. I’ve mostly kept to myself my whole life. Being a dirthenara creates a love of solitude. It’s the only relief I get. It’s quite an irritating position, exalted though it may be. 

“Ah, yes.” Solas stifled a smile, remembering glittering halls of fire where the chant was endless and the chanters never once stopped singing. He had not often thought to consider what that actually meant for them. It must have been so much worse in the eternity, before time was given an end, given the unique burden of Sylaise’s priestesses, when they sang for uncountable millennia on end without even stopping for breath. 

He had never bothered to spend enough time around them to sympathize, being annoyed enough by their form of reverence. He preferred the silent halls of Mythal in comparison, if one _had_ to keep a temple, although he eschewed the practice.  
In his distraction of memory, he allowed her a glimpse of the glories he had lost. 

“In my travels in the fade, I encountered keepers of Sylaises’s temples who did not stop singing for our entire interaction, although we were able to converse, in a way. They crafted every thought into not simply a song but a song of beauty, a work that stood as a whole in its perfection. In this way they were able to sing to curious spirits, guiding them across the fade along the channels of song to do their bidding out of love, a less invasive form of spirit binding. I always found the technique most curious,” Solas spoke, his eyes closed in thought as he remembered what had come before his folly.  


“Really? You've met one? Could you tell me more about the keepers?” she exclaimed, bristling with joy. "My mamae once told me that the ancient keepers all wore rope-like robes they crafted from veilfire... and _nothing else!_ " 

Oh dear. This would excite her far too much, and he would be forced to tell a detailed enough story to be caught in a lie. 

“Perhaps another time. I would like to hear more about your experiences. I have not met many Elven priestesses in this day and age. That interests me far more.” 

“This day and age? As opposed to the ones you met a thousand years ago?” laughed Sulahn’nehn. Solas simply smiled, staying silent to prompt her to continue. 

“Well, you know I’m with Clan Lavellan now. I was traded at the Arlath'vhen of the Silent Moon for a few aravels full of gold, of all the bloody things. I didn't even ask how much or how many, although I would have cared for the number as a child. It's not something I feel I should define myself by now." 

She inadvertently kicked the floor hard enough to erase most of her drawing, spraying dirt away from the two elves. Solas could not bring himself to meet her gaze, her anguish written clearly across her face. To be forced to consider your own worth as a being in such concrete physical terms, next to such a menial gift... The Dalish were truly foolish to treat such a noble spirit so carelessly. She must have spent her life wondering if she was worth more than ten masterwork aravels. 

Sulahn'nehn finished flattening the dust to make a fresh canvas for her nimble foot, and went on. "Lavellan interacts with the world enough to amass extra wealth; Vhen’durgen needed gold to buy more crafting materials to make things to trade for… more gold. They told me they had no more need of my wisdom.” She shook her head in exasperation. 

“A poor trade, by all accounts,” smiled Solas. “I am glad you are here, free of those who deign to trade you like cattle. You are worth so much more than that.” 

“Ma serannas, hahren,” she replied, seemingly surprised by his advocation. He burned with anguish for the life she had led, this beautiful woman, deserving of all he could imagine.  
  
He was glad she sought him out, this little flickering flame that threatened to ignite his heart. He had learned much about her from this conversation, the most she had ever spoken to him. Did she take an interest in him on her own? Or was it the mark that drew her to its true owner? He did not wish to impose himself on her spirit any more than he already accidentally had. How could he ask her who she was and if she had changed without alarming her? 

"Are you happy with your role in your clan, da'len? Or would you rather be here in Haven among the shemlen, and... others?" asked Solas, his eyes burning into hers as they stood near enough to touch, auras mingling as they focused on each other's presence. Sulahn'nehn blushed at the implication, and seemed to disconnect from him, her eyes defocusing into the distance as she spoke. 

“Absolutely. More than anywhere else, even back with my blood-clan, where I used to call home. My brother Enasal used to hit me if I didn’t sing in rhyme when I spoke to him. He loved Andruil, and killing things just to wear their pelts around in pride. I hated him." She seemed calm while stating this fact, her hands twisting in her crimson hair while she perfected the landscape she had now made on his porch floor dust. 

“Singing and rhyming all the time was just the worst, in the beginning. It was only me and my cousin when we trained, for years, and everyone was so jealous _we_ got to be the new dirthenera that they endlessly taunted us. I’m the only other mage in my clan now, so I’m First in line for Keeper, but as dirthenera I’m still not allowed to talk normally within the camp to most other Dalish without them getting upset. It's considered inauspicious to hear a dirthenera speak instead of sing." She rolled her eyes impetuously. "I do like my clanmates, but Keeper Istmaethoriel is a little… boring. She doesn’t have anything new to teach me, at least. " She began to transfer a tiny amount of heat magic into the crevices in the dust, snakes of fire glowing to illuminate her landscape.  
  
"Lavellan are a bit unusual for the Dalish; they focus on trading information and goods, and rather than being named for an idea, they are named for a person, a successful merchant from the First Age. My keeper understood my hunger to learn more, and she has much life still in her, so she sent me into the shemlen world to gather the lost secrets of our People from those who once stole them and try to teach the old ways in return. Circles, chantries, the like. I spent a lot of time in alienages. I healed a few sick vena'dhals, I shepherded lost young mages away from possession, I read Circle libraries until I exhausted my interests and left. I even studied with the bards in Val Royeaux for a while. I like traveling. I like meeting people and learning their stories, unless I meet another Dalish clan, and then, well..." 

The landscape glittered in green veilfire on the ground, wisps of magic still snaking gently from her feet. "You know, it’s nice to be able to talk to another elf who doesn’t force me to _sing_ to them all the bloody time.” Sulahn’nehn giggled suddenly, momentarily forgetting her earlier discomfort. 

Solas smiled back quietly, eyes crinkling as the young elf opened up to him. He bit his tongue, after his earlier admission excited her so. 

“I did get _really_ good at writing songs in the process, though.” She looked up at him proudly and slowly smiled, vallaslin curling with her expression, an involuntarily seductive gesture that tugged at him from the base of his soul. “Was it difficult for you to learn to walk the Fade, as you do? Did you have others, or were you alone?"

“Not at all” he said easily, forgetting to lie to her momentarily. Now he would have to scramble to avoid giving anything away. “I took great interest in the subject, and spent a great deal of time there, speaking to many friendly spirits about the secrets the place contained. I was never alone in their presence, nor did I wish to be.”

“That sounds lovely,” sighed Sulahn'nehn, head tilted sharply as she gazed into his eyes as though the secrets of the Fade lay behind them. “I wish I could befriend spirits. I’m pretty sure I can hear their songs when they want me to. I don't fear them, they want to help me.”

“Are these the songs you use in combat?” Solas prompted. Had she more training, the spirits would have fought at her command, unbound. A mighty, ancient magic, foolishly ignored by those who sought the powers of spirits more directly through summoning circles. 

All she could do at the moment was raise their notice from across the Fade to receive their love and protection, a secondary barrier of invigoration and defense. She shrugged as she began to describe her studies with the practiced ease of a soldier sharing sword techniques. 

“Sometimes. Any song will work, with the right intent. The Orlesian bards don’t know that, you know. They’re not even mages. They always sing the same melody and lyrics and think it's the song that brings the power. The shemlen are wrong, it's just that _they_ can only find the right intent with a few old songs." She laughed scornfully. "They're too proud to delve any deeper for the most part. They formalized the song magic into combat techniques, but don’t understand it enough to use it properly. I usually pick songs that are especially loud around me because they carry the most magic. Or songs I like, which are easier for me to conduit power through if there is a source available nearby. 

She shrugged. "But the intent is the important part. And it's not a gift or anything, I mean, any mage could really learn it with practice. The meditation exercises were hard, hours on end of singing one note while both inhaling and exhaling and trying to make it connect. I couldn’t do it at all for years of trying every day. I got it in the end. I started when I was eight, when my magic appeared.” 

“I am pleased to see you wield music as your shield. It is the oldest and most exquisite form of magic” Solas said carelessly, looking at the torn sky as he thought of the old days when all things sang in thanks for their existence. 

Now so few living things sang, lyrium being the exception, the yearning blood of the sundered, but her songs cut straight through the Fade and into his heart. She was as close to being divine, without the benefit of immortality, as an elf could be, and she did not know. He could not tell her. She understood so much more than most, but the deepest secrets of her own order were still lost to her, and it was not his place to restore them. 

“It is an old art form, yes. It dates back to Arlathan, maybe before. There’s only eight of us practicing now. I’m the youngest, and probably the best known, since I travel the most. Most Dalish keepers recognize me, at least.”  
  
She did not know the primal truths of the magic she practiced. But she was so beautiful, so graceful and wise, confident and resurgent, as much as Sylaise herself had ever been, before the madness of the Void took her as it took all the others. He supposed that his old friend Sylaise, too, would have been impressed by this young girl. 

Perhaps he had misjudged the Dalish, if they could create such a shining spirit, a bright flame to cleanse the world before he came to remake it. There was some fragment of the glory of Arlathan still available to their People, even if it only existed when she raised her diamond clear voice to channel it.

“Herald! Have a drink with me! You like taverns, right? There's a _bard_ in here, and I want you to meet her!” called Varric, about to enter that infernally loud tavern across the way. Sulahn’nehn turned and waved at their friend, turning back to Solas with that same neutral mask he saw earlier. “I, um… Tell me about the Keepers again sometime, please?”

“ _Ma nuvenin, da'len. Dareth shiral,_ ” murmured the tall elf, watching with amusement as she gracefully leaped across the path to the tavern in two nearly-airborne strides to alight at the door of the tavern and follow Varric inside. A loud, drunken cheer followed her entrance, finally muffled by the slow closing of the door. The fallen god turned back to his solitary musings.


	3. Song to Sylaise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sulahn'nehn slowly gets stronger, taking down the Templar order until Corypheus attacks Haven. All is thought lost until her miraculous return. Solas tries to tell her the truth, but stops himself and gives her Skyhold instead.

He watched quietly as she rose to power, her flame burning ever brighter as she learned the ways of a leader of nations. He watched as she closed rifts with ever increasing skill, applying her formidable young wits to Chantry crones and twisted Templars alike, battling demons with no fear of their suggestive powers as she turned desperate but noble souls to her cause and dissolved the Templar order he alone knew she despised into her ranks. 

Although her personal guard of skilled companions, varied admirably both in specialization and background, grew ever more, she always kept him by her side when she ventured outside Haven, resplendent in scarlet and streaming with staff-fire on her great red hart. For “barrier support,” she insisted in company when questioned, although he enjoyed the way she walked beside him and called him hahren in that soft, respectful, mellifluous tone she had begun to reserve for when they spoke alone.

He appreciated her eagerness to help him find and reactivate the Veil-creating wards he and his followers had placed long ago, even as he kept their full history from her. To his displeasure, however, she had also struck up the friendship of an obnoxious young city elf who positively spat upon his stories of the past and the Fade. Sulahn’nehn would laugh mischievously at this girl’s folly, encouraging it, all the while begging him with those sharply longing veilfire-green eyes to continue, and continue he did, sighing as the crude blonde child blew raspberries at the chuckling Warden behind him. 

He was fortunate that they only ventured out with the venomous enchantress Vivienne on one occasion, where she managed to pridefully insult not only his clothing but the abilities of all apostate mages within Sulahn’nehn’s sharp hearing. It won no favors with the modest young Dalish priestess, apostate, penniless and transient all her life, who appreciated nothing more than the beauty achieved through hard work and certainly matched- if not outmatched- the First Enchanter of Orlais in demonstrated magical ability, although she was younger by decades. He had come to learn and admire so much about her in their travels. 

Shining brightest among their companions came the sweet spirit of compassion who called himself Cole, who came to the dirthenera as she sang in her hour of need against the demon of envy.

Did she realize how much her own power had grown? She had called a spirit to her side out of love and a genuine willingness to aid her as a physical bodyguard, a power reserved for the most ancient of dirthenera, all long dead, an ability seemingly awakened by his own orb’s anchor. 

Magic is magic, he reasoned, and her own practiced techniques, honed into a fine blade through her own constantly creating, always humming personality, were the best way she knew to channel them. Perhaps that is what had made his own siblings unique, once. With her mastery of the anchor, along with the power she had amassed as a leader, power that had no mystical basis but was real, grounded, and truly admirable in his eyes, Sulahn’nehn gained the numbers to take on the Breach itself. It seemed almost too easy. He should have known by now.

As they returned, triumphant, the blighted Corypheus came to Haven with his dragon to claim that which he had lost. Failing to take her mark, he resolved to punish her by taking Haven itself. In her wit and wisdom, so beyond her years, she foiled him by using their own trebuchets to destroy Haven, her own capital, her people assured of their safety. No power-mad ruler would have done such a thing. The very act made him laugh in its glorious audacity, a feat worthy of him. He grew ever fonder of her. But with the destruction of Haven, she was gone, seemingly lost to him a third time, defeated and never to return.

And yet again, somehow, by some fortunate twist of fate or divine blessing (though he knew the two were inseparable), she returned to them, stumbling, weakened and shivering, like a halla that had been left out in the cold and slowly found its clan. Her magic was drained, having spent it all trying to heat herself with a barrier of fire. When the commanders ushered her into the camp’s healing beds, she slept for days, like she had the first time. He wondered what ordeal she had overcome to reach them. Perhaps he would never know. 

But when she awoke, she seemed defeated, disappointed by the squabbling of her advisors and the desperation of her people. It was the Chantry mother who reminded her of her powers, of her purpose as an elf. Sulahn’nehn had spoken to him before about her travels to Chantries all over Thedas, sent by her diplomatically gifted Keeper to learn from them as they expressed their religious fervor through the Chant, which the Dalish erroneously claim was stolen from them in spirit.

She told him things of the present he had ignored in the Fade simply because they did not interest him; how, in many Chantries, the Chant was still sung rather than spoken, and, curiously, their melodies copied traditional elven songs sung to the gods, such as the Song to Sylaise, one of her favorites. She had spent much time in the tavern of Haven, sharing songs with Leliana (a surprisingly gifted singer, he discovered) and the bard Maryden, writing tavern-tainted versions of old elven melodies in the Fereldan language dedicated to her companions and their shared struggles for the bard to perform for the Inquisition, to the loud delight of the obnoxious da’len. He could hear Sera’s shouts for another rendition of “Sera was Never” from the porch of his old quarters and sometimes even from inside, a fact that had always peeved him which he was now, sadly but thankfully, rid of. 

And here in their frigidly remote camp the Chantry mother began to sing to the crowd in resonating alto, a song in Fereldan speaking of hope, the dawn to come, sung to the eternal melody of the Song to Sylaise. Solas watched from the shadows, bald brow furrowed as Sulahn’nehn grinned mischievously at the gathering group of Andrastian believers and began to sing along, her voice clear and sublime above the gathered crowd, easily following the new lyrics as she already knew the tune. 

They spoke to a Maker, and raised her as the Herald of Andraste, even as she sang in her heart to her beloved Sylaise, the crowd and the dirthenara singing two great hearts as one, though they would not have realized it.

Her staff’s fire quietly extended itself into the sky behind her as she sang, a barrier of warmth and love surrounding the imperceptive masses of gathered shemlen as their own voices bolstered her own and empowered her magic. 

Even as he listened to the beauty of her voice shining above the others in quiet wonder, Solas could not escape the vision of a proud and beautiful elf, bare-faced and hovering high in a glorious orb of glittering rainbow fire, as she sang above the thousands of long-suffering but once-willing slaves who marched in song below her, singing endlessly, never stopping for breath, to empower their beloved goddess’s divine flame for centuries. 

When the song came to an end, its peaceful healing heat magic gently reverberating throughout the camp to the notice of none save himself and Cole, though all noticed the apparent improvement of the weather, he took her from the side of the Chantry mother with a word. It was clearly time to tell her… some things. He took her to a veilfire torch he had erected near the camp from a brazier he brought back from the Fallow Mire. She loved fire as much as she loved her friends, he knew all too well, and he had often used the torch’s soft green light as a place of quiet contemplation in the weeks before she miraculously reappeared. As they walked, his footsteps made no mark on the newly fallen snow, but her warm barrier tread a path that melted cleanly all the way back to the camp.

He deftly lit the veilfire for her, adding a dash of the other fires he knew to cast, a quiet show of his own power he knew she alone among those he had met in this age would appreciate. “The humans have not raised one of our people so high for ages beyond counting,” he began. Indeed, she had risen beyond even what his siblings would ever have believed from one with a marked face. The complacency of the shemlen was nothing compared to what she would have suffered from one of his own. “Her faith is hard won, lethallin, worthy of pride, save one detail.” 

He called her lethallin… blood-sister though she truly was not, a slip of the tongue that betrayed the sheer depth of his admiration of her in ways she did not understand. He wondered if she would notice it, but continued. It was time to tell her. “The threat Corypheus wields? The orb he carries? It is…” No, he could not tell her. Not yet. He could not lose her yet, not before he had her. “Ours.” He had not broken in his patter; surely she would not notice. He thanked Fenrir for the speed it had granted his waking thoughts. “Corypheus used the Orb to open the Breach. Unlocking it must have caused the explosion that destroyed the Conclave.”

That was enough for now. Vague enough to tell her what she needed to know to act without admitting his involvement. “We must find out how he survived, and we must prepare for their reaction, when they learn the orb is of our People.” It was enough to warn her. He hoped she would not question the source of his knowledge too deeply; he could only make up so many Fade-related excuses before tiring in exasperation. Perhaps the latter warning would distract her sufficiently. He had another distraction in mind, if it did not. 

“All right, what is it, and how do you know about it?” she responded in determination, to his amusement. She was always cleverer than he expected. Her song’s magic still rang in his heart, reminding him of her worthiness. 

He rewarded her with unfiltered details. “Such things were Foci, said to channel power from our gods. Some were dedicated to specific members of our Pantheon. All that remains are references in dead ruins, and faint visions of memory in the Fade, echoes of a dead empire.” His brow furrowed again, straining at the weight of omitting the most important detail while telling his little flame so much. 

“But however Corypheus came to it, the orb is Elven, and with it, he threatens the heart of human faith.” Sulahn’nehn sighed as she weighed the implications of the statement, waving her hands by the fire, her slight figure silhouetted as she stood so near him he felt the heat of her barriers radiating on his back. She gazed at him over a delicate shoulder with a wry, sad smile, crimson markings distorting as her emotions overcame their bounds. 

“Even if we defeat Corypheus, eventually they’ll find a way to blame elves,” she said gently, turning back to the veilfire, as he watched her unmarked hand dance through the tips of the flames, deftly but casually forming tiny, ornate, seemingly solid tendrils at the torch’s zenith that resembled master-crafted Dalish ironwork and held themselves suspended in flame.  
  
He chuckled gently in agreement at her cynicism, and at his rare display of emotion, she dropped her focus, turning back to him to smile sweetly in return as her hand returned to her side and the flame-tendrils disappeared into wisps of green smoke. 

“I suspect you are correct,” smiled the ancient elf, cynical over millennia of misguided hope and failed attempts at valor. “It is unfortunate, but we must be above suspicion to be seen as valued allies.” A precarious position for many… but indeed, a role this little pyromancer had experienced for most of her young life, for refusal of her duties would, if tradition held as he suspected, strip her of her religious title and honor among the small minded Dalish. “Faith in you is shaping this moment, but it needs room to grow.” 

He wondered if her people still had faith in her, if they respected her new position in the Inquisition. She had gone to the Conclave as a representative dirthenara, singer, teacher and historian to her clan, the most suited to writing and relating the history of the events there for the elven people without prejudice from either side of the proceedings. And now she had risen as a hero of her time, a hero of her people. She was so much greater than the ones she honored, who had once traded her for aravels like a golden halla, especially with all she had overcome at Haven. 

The elvhen had always respected one who overcame struggle to find greatness. Vir Suledin, the way of the struggle, the most noble and challenging of all paths to tread. Fen’Harel himself could not escape it, and she had already passed its trials. Perhaps, now, in her third miraculous reappearance, she had come by some inner knowledge to surpass his own. He could not yet tell her the truth, even as he had brought her here for the purpose. He gave her the next best thing he had left to him. Skyhold. 

“By attacking the inquisition, Corypheus has changed it. Changed you,” he said passionately, stepping so close he nearly touched his long nose to hers before he noticed his impropriety and shifted his stance.

She had noticed, however, and shifted closer to him, blushing under her scarlet markings. 

“Scout to the north. Be their guide,” he insisted. “There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. There is a place where the Inquisition can build… grow. Skyhold.” 

Teraslyan tel’as. The place the sky was held back, the ancient point of weakness where he sundered the Fade and the Void from the world by creating the veil. It was Sulahn’nehn who held back this aching sky, and her fortress to hold. He would gift this to her, in her clear-hearted worthiness, much as his orb had chosen her for its gift in the face of the tainted soul of Corypheus as the only alternative. 

As her eyes flickered in the veilfire, shining at the prospect of a new fortress for her cause, Solas gazed with renewed hope at the path in the snow her barriers had melted on their way to the torch. In the wake of her intense heat and light, small white flowers had sprung up to slowly bloom.


	4. Song of Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fade Tongue. Enough said.

Solas surveyed the primed and sanded walls of his rotunda with care, graceful hand on clefted chin, contemplating his plans to fill them with the strategic patience of a master of chess. He loved the fresco-painting process for the meditative calm it offered him, for the breadth of time it took to plan every mixture of pigment and placement of line beforehand and the speed at which the plaster dried as he worked, fighting against him at every motion, freezing any careless errors in indelible time as all his mistakes had been, a mural so eager to be finished it wrestled with its own maker as the world once wrestled with its gods. 

This would be his masterpiece, of all the murals he had painted in Arlathan, and this one would be for her, the shining flame by his side that cleansed the world in her brilliance and intensity. He would paint her story into hallowed image, telling of her choices, her greatness, a history that would stand long after her songs had faded into the void. 

Perhaps he would teach her the craft, in time. He knew she would practice hard enough to gain tremendous skill, her indomitable focus granted by her sheer love for her people’s lost arts. Her aesthetic senses were already finely honed. That was one aspect of Arlathan’s glory that lay dormant within her with no need of his influence: her unconditional adoration of the beauty in the natural world, fondly knowing it enough to mimic and honor it through fire and song. She was as grounded in the waking world as his wolf heart was in the Fade, as happy here as he was there. 

But here she came, her brilliant light guiding him down from the boundless cloud of his thoughts as she entered his sanctuary in the Fade to interrupt him. 

“Hahren?” she called to the wolf god softly as she stepped into his lair. “I’m… interested in what you told me of your studies. If you have time, I’d like to hear more.” 

She stood before him meekly, emerald eyes glinting with joy in his presence, humbly requesting his company and his wisdom. 

“You continue to surprise me. All right, let us talk… preferably somewhere more interesting than this," he said to her in acquiescence, ancient voice filled with grave admiration. She had sought him out, him alone, here of all places. And even though she was a mage, she was no dreamer, that he knew. The power of his Mark continued to grow, and she had already learned to harness it. 

Knowing her travels as a novice to the Fade would be easiest in a place formed by her own memory, he brought her back to Haven, where his time in the Inquisition had begun, although she was in no shape to experience their first meeting. As they approached the great hall together, held together in facsimile by their shared memory, she seemed disoriented as she asked why he chose the venue. He knew she had not had enough practice walking the Fade with purpose, mage though she may be. He resolved to teach her this skill, too, with time. He smiled at her naïveté, walking ahead of her and gesturing to explain the thread of shared memory and emotion that connected them both to the place and made it exist in the Fade. 

“Haven is familiar. It will always be important to you.” She walked behind him, not quite understanding.  
  
“We talked about that already,” she said, as they entered the hall, referring to an earlier conversation in waking where she claimed to have moved on from their immediate failures. That was not what he meant. No matter how she proceeded, the path she had walked and the choices she made would always be behind her, memories she could always return to, the weight of her past losses ever diminishing the hope of her future victories. Such had been the struggling path of the wolf whose choices had failed him over thousands of years. Haven was the rare place their memories intersected, lost as her light had been to him as he searched the Fade for hope and wisdom. 

The two came to a familiar jail, chains on the walls clinking in emptiness and desolation. Solas stepped into the dark, fire-lit room, filled with memories of the first time this beautiful da’len had been brought to him after the cruel might of Corypheus at the Conclave, an unrecognizable charred husk of a thing, barely alive save for the green glow from her hand that was bound to her spirit. 

“I sat beside you while you slept, studying the Anchor.” he said wistfully, eyes crinkling at the pain she must have suffered at Corypheus’s hand, the pain he took great care to heal before she awoke, inspecting the smooth curves of her figure that emerged from the ashes with a medic’s careful attention and an artist’s regard for beauty. At least the blast would have been quick and painless. She was so young. She would not have felt much of what had been wrought on her mortal form.

The sweet young elf smiled at him warmly, now so appreciative of his care and skill, suspicious though she had once been. “I’m glad someone was watching over me,” she said softly. 

“You were a mystery,” Solas continued, turning to her to smile in approval. “You still are. I ran every test I could imagine, searched the Fade, yet found nothing.” He had found no trace of her when he searched for her spirit in the Fade as her body lay dormant, no way of reaching out to her through dreams as she slept, as was his power. He remembered the desperation of that time, the flailing Chantry with no leader, the murdered Divine’s left and right hand grasping wildly to wring at anyone that offered help. 

“Cassandra suspected duplicity. She threatened to have me executed as an apostate if I didn’t produce results.” The young girl smirked at him, unsurprised at her friend’s violent reaction. 

“Cassandra’s like that with everyone,” she said casually, eliciting an unfettered laugh from the wolf. 

The two left the dank cell filled with unpleasant memories for both of them, although she had only experienced it awake for minutes. He had toiled for days in that cell, voluntarily, and she would never know the full extent of it. To bring her physically back to a salvageable form, enough to study the Anchor’s markings to determine what Corypheus had planned for his orb, took an entire day’s worth of focused healing, but by the end her entire body lay restored under his careful power, finally recognizable as not only an elf but a rather pretty one- although one that had no natural means of ever waking again. 

“You were never going to wake up. How could you, a mortal sent physically through the Fade?” He felt so comfortable opening up to her just this once, in his safe place, her young eyes gazing into his ancient ones with wisdom and patience beyond her years. 

“I was frustrated, frightened. The spirits I might have consulted had been driven away by the Breach. Although I wished to help, I had no faith in Cassandra, nor she in me. I was ready to flee.” Her wisdom remained even in her disorientation at her circumstances, as she reminded him of Cassandra’s nature. 

“If you’d run, Cassandra would have been certain of your guilt. She would have hunted you down.” A harsh truth, gently delivered. She was right, and he was glad he had not given in to his urges.  
  
He never thought things through enough. The wolf gave him so much time, but never time enough to think before it urged him to act. 

“You are likely right,” admitted Solas, turning to the memory of the Breach in the sky, the greatest indicator of the Lavellan elf’s disorientation at her surroundings as she had entirely failed to notice it even as she had destroyed it weeks earlier. Speaking his mind to her brought him peace, as she seemingly absorbed his cares and folded them into her own burning heart, briefly freeing him from his burdens as he spoke. The dirthenara’s blessing, granted in the name of Sylaise. 

“I told myself: one more attempt to seal the Rifts,” he said, thrusting a hand uselessly toward the Breach in a gesture that mocked the power she- no, Corypheus- had taken from him. Without the orb to focus his great will into, he could do nothing of note. “I tried and failed. No ordinary magic would affect them. I watched the rifts expand and grown, resigned myself to flee, and then…” 

He had a vision of the moment it all changed, when her own mortal hand stretched out and willed the rift to close on Fen’Harel’s behalf, ably accessing his gifts in a flash of renewed hope for the world, most of all for the quickling elven people she called her blood-kin. For he had not included them in his plans, not expected that any of them protected and nurtured the old ways as he came to learn she did, not expected that one born of their age could survive such great magic and live, let alone master it and rise. He turned back toward her passionately, closing the distance between them. 

“It seems you hold the key to our salvation. You had sealed it with a gesture, and right then, I felt the whole world change.” He was so proud of her, so focused on releasing his long-barricaded memories and feelings into her willing heart that he barely noticed her eyebrows raising, her reddened heart-shaped lips pouting and then smirking as she misinterpreted his remark. 

“Felt the whole world… change?” she asked slyly. 

“A figure of speech,” he smiled dismissively. 

He had not meant it in that sense, although she was not wrong in his affections for her. But those affections had grown slowly and intensely like a shard of everite since that very day, as they travelled the lands of southern Thedas that once belonged to their people, as he witnessed her strength, her wisdom and her grace in action. She was so perfect, so unlike the crude Dalish who spurned him for centuries. 

Did she feel the same for him? He knew she respected him, admired him, but he did not presume her intentions to exist beyond the sibling-like camaraderie she shared with all the others. But she was persistent in her flirtations, excited by his misinterpreted admission, stepping ever closer. Had she known who he was, what he was, she would never dare to love him, never dream of it as she did now. The truth pained him ever more. 

“I’m aware of the metaphor. I’m more interested in ‘felt’,” she cooed, advancing softly as he backed away in fear of his own long-dormant desires. 

“You change… everything,” he insisted. Everything. The world itself shifted under her. 

How could he overthrow the existing empires of Thedas to bring back Arlathan when the one who held his power now protected them all? How could he leave the quickling elves to die while he brought glory and immortality back to his own people, when they counted one as sublimely perfect as her among their own? It was too much to bear. All his plans would have to change. 

Her lips brushed his ear, melodiously whispering, “sweet talker,” as he turned from her in quiet frustration at her insistence on misinterpreting his words. But then, out of nowhere, came her delicate hand on his jaw, her soft lips on his, bare feet raised on tiptoe to reach him, a chaste invitation a Dalish First should have known better than to offer the Dread Wolf.

He had wanted her so badly for so long, this sweet little elf with the dancing eyes, but controlled his desires as he did in all things. It was wrong for so many reasons. She already held his power involuntarily, he could not take further advantage of her. He still did not know if it affected her mind, changed her reasoning to be more in line with his own. 

He had not known her before the mark, and could not know if she had always been his kindred spirit or if it was something forced upon her through divine magic. She was so, so young, a mere snowflake falling on the ancient glacier of his soul. And, in the back of his mind, he knew what his siblings would say to his bond with one of a marked face, worth no less in spirit but bound by the evils of their culture, Sylaise’s haughty sneer branded into his memory. 

But the wolf inside him roared in hunger and he could not deny what they both wanted, what she wanted. He pulled her in close, diving in for kiss after kiss as he held her tightly, her slender back arched into his strong arms. She responded breathlessly, her kisses matching his in intensity but surpassing them in heat as the tip of her soft tongue explored his mouth in turn. 

He nearly lost control then, nearly took her screaming right there, but he pulled himself back, shaking his hairless head as he retreated from her magnetic touch and fought to control the ardent beast within. 

“We shouldn’t. It’s not right. Not even here,” he said ruefully, disbelieving his own words. 

“What do you mean, even here?” she retorted in surprise. Ah, yes, she still had not noticed the impossibility of their situation, although she was the one to call to him in the Fade. 

“Where did you think we were?” asked the elder elf, eyes crinkling as he smiled at her confusion.  
  
It would take a little time and practice before she would walk the Fade at will, although it would take millennia for her to reach his own level of mastery, time sadly now denied to her. She had come quite far this night, for a beginner. 

“This isn’t real,” she whispered, understanding dawning in her eyes as she looked around her, shimmering slightly more solid as she contemplated her position in the Fade with conscious eyes for the first time. 

“That’s a matter of debate,” Solas smiled softly, having debated the very topic for centuries, “probably best discussed after you… Wake Up.” 

He flexed his will at the last two words, guiding her back into the world of the waking even as he stood alone in his memory of Haven. He hoped she would not remember his parting magic too clearly. It was meant to be used, not witnessed, the immense word and will of a true god. He suspected he had no need to worry, that the events that immediately preceded the words would fill her mind as they did his, the memory of her soft lips still brushing against his as he opened his eyes to the heaving weight of a barrier ward filled overnight with crow droppings. 

Solas sighed, begrudgingly in the world of the waking again, as he began his morning rituals, first cleaning and recasting the ward above his rotunda to protect his belongings from the aim of birds that flew in the rookery overhead.


	5. Song of Lyrium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sulahn'nehn and the gang encounter the Dalish in the Exalted Plains, and Sulahn'nehn has an unexpected reaction to the sight of her own people: a panic attack. She demands lyrium, and does something weird. Everyone's confused, except Solas, who is worried.

He first noticed her great weakness to lyrium in the Exalted Plains, on a day when the strength of the sunlight cast vivid green shadows from the ancient tree-boughs onto the rolling root-scarred knolls below. They had travelled ordinarily enough, as ordinary as it was for this motley crew of a dwarf and three elves to spend their days sealing rifts and battling demons. She seemed happy in this place, the land that had once been promised to her people, beautiful and brimming with ancient long-forgotten mysteries. Until they came to a red flag in a narrow passage, an elven glyph branded on the finely woven spindleweed in crushed bloodstone.

“A Dalish encampment must be nearby,” spoke Solas aloud, mostly for the benefit of the others as Sulahn’nehn now stood silently in place with her gaze transfixed at her feet, brow furrowing in ugly intensity. 

“What’s wrong, Red?” asked Varric, moving to pat his friend on the shoulder as she made no attempt to disguise her trepidation, an oddly visceral reaction from the only Dalish elf in their number. 

“They’re going to make me sing,” she said softly to herself. She remembered where she was again, and steeled herself a little, looking up to address her companions directly. 

“They’re going to make me sing, and I don’t remember the right songs. I’ve been loafing around in the tavern with you two and Maryden all month, and the songs in my head have lost their… I don’t know how to describe it. They don’t sound right, and the clan’s going to notice, and they’ll get upset with me, with the Inquisition, with all of us, and I can’t remember how to make it sound…” she paused, looking around for the words to fit her odd plight, settling on Sera for some reason, “elfy again.” Solas understood the problem, but this was one beyond the realm of that which he even wanted to have power over.

Did she truly always have music in her head? His own mind was a bastion of silence, a great cave for the wolf of his intellect to run around the world in endless fleeting circles. The three companions stood in awkward silence as Sulahn’nehn took off and began to pace around the ravine, muttering to herself. The dwarf and the elf child looked at each other in confusion- this was a new side to their leader- as Sulahn’nehn suddenly turned on her heel and paced toward Varric in renewed determination. “Varric. You’re a dwarf. Do you have any lyrium?” she asked, her sweet voice failing entirely at concealing the demand with politesse.

_"Lyrium_?” burst Varric in surprise. None of them had expected that, Solas least of all. “You mean a lyrium potion? I think you carry plenty for us all, Inquisitor.” 

“No, raw lyrium. Crystals, shards, fragments. Do you have any?” She looked at the dwarf’s pack as though she would take it herself if he refused. This was a strange new side to her, one he had only seen mimicked among fallen templars in recent times. 

“Uh… sure, I have a little. Hold on.” Varric knelt to the ground to remove the pack, likely heavier than he was in his stocky stature, and carefully removed a small pouch of velvet, from which he removed one faceted, shining blue crystal, holding it gingerly as he held it before her. “I keep a little as a safety net, just in case I’m in a bind and I need to make some fast gold.” Only a child of the stone could have carried such a sacred artifact on their person without descending into madness.  
  
But Sulahn’nehn was swift and hungry, ignoring him as he spoke, seizing the tiny crystal and thrusting it into her delicate leaflike ear in one smooth motion. Before Solas could move to stop her from such a dangerous act, she slid flaccid to the ground with a great gasp, her green eyes shining blue as she pressed her languid form into the rocks in their path as though she wanted to melt into them, seemingly pulled by every corner of her spirit toward the center of the world. She began to sing into the ground, an otherworldly tune almost deafening in its power, a song he had never before heard from mortal lips that lived to continue the melody. Her sublime soprano soared solo through the valley, overwhelming them all. 

He was glad for the privacy of his position behind the two younger companions as they stared at her in awe, transfixed by the immortal music that spewed uncontrollably from the young dirthenara. For he could not stand this song, an ancient song calling out to him and his siblings with passionate intensity, sending him to his knees as he struggled against the might of its need. Against this song, he had no choice but to listen.

Before the melody could end in its entirety, the crimson-headed singer stopped her own song in its tracks by filling it with a great, tuneless screech as she took her marked hand, glowing and activated in its full array of runes, to seize the tiny crystal of lyrium that now protruded three feet from her head and yank it from her own ear, bleeding, allowing it to tumble to the ground and break into pieces. At once, she backed away on her knees, sweating, shaking, muttering loudly. “That was so weird. It was like I was both sides of a lodestone at once. The mark hates the lyrium. I was pulled toward it, body and spirit, but my hand was repelled.” 

There were truths in her observations she was not yet ready to discover. Had it not been for the mark, they would have all watched in horror as she became a rock-wraith, her life force absorbed into the lyrium itself so willingly. Solas stayed silent, bending to offer quiet mending comfort to her ravaged ear through his touch as his little flame flickered beneath him. She began to cry, losing all control of her practiced breath, hyperventilating and sweating on the floor, such a private and desperate moment she had no qualms about displaying in front of her closest friends.

He refocused his healing energy to calm her aching spirit, so much more damaged by her foolhardy action than her right ear, which remained scarred by the chasm left by the lyrium— a chasm, he noted with new understanding of her, that had already been there to a lesser extent when they met. At least he had managed to restore its function. 

“I can’t remember what I just sang. I forgot it. Again. It’s so beautiful, but it won’t stay in my head. But…” She stared at the immortal sun as though it held the secrets she sought, squinting through tears. “I can copy it. I think.” She brought herself gingerly to her feet, leaning on his hand for support, mopping sweat and tears from her brow with her sleeve. “I’m sorry. I’m ready. Let’s go.”  


Varric took charge of the freshly grown lyrium, expressing confusion and horror but pleasure at his strangely increased bounty. They began to head toward the encampment of the Dalish she seemed to dread so deeply. 

“That song… I don’t remember it either, but it sounded just like lyrium does, Herald,” said Varric in fascination as they trod, the priestess humming melodies all the while, more flowing in their aspect now than the staccato tunes she loved to perform to the raucous delight of their tavern loving friends. 

“How do you do that, anyway?” interjected the intolerable child Sera. “It’s like you don’t even take a _breath_. How do you sing without taking a breath?”

Sulahn’nehn laughed, the panic of the ravine already forgotten, a peal that somehow matched the melody she had just been humming. “I do breathe, but it’s more complicated than that. I was trained to sing when I breathe in, too. It makes a different sound, creates a different intention, quieter, gentler, more precise. There are some songs that use the intake of song for effect, like fiddlers bow their strings both up and down. ‘I am the One,’ in its original form, starts on the intake, which I’ve always found so beautiful.” 

As they grew closer to the Dalish camp, she sang the song for them, birds no longer fleeting in fear as they passed but staying on their branches to listen, a song so old it predated the elven language but had somehow remained in the hearts of the People, her steps growing ever more graceful and dancelike as she mentally prepared to act the role of the dirthenara. 

When they came to the small clearing of elves, watched over by his great statue over a waterfall, her entire demeanor had already changed. She no longer spoke her words, singing her thoughts to her companions in melodies so perfect her innocuous statements could have been preserved by an eager, but lesser bard; to look to the beautiful birds in the trees, to pass her a flagon of water, please.

As the clan’s Keeper came into view, his world-weary face crossed by caverns of time that interrupted the symbols of Andruil coursing through his features, she changed her very stance to a gracefully unnatural one, arms raised with elbows out, palms heralding the sky as her feet stepped delicately, one in front of the other. 

She sang of the peace of the place in her approach - aneth ara, hahren - as the wizened elf gazed upon her with an unmistakeable expression of joyful relief. In her traditional entrance, she had allowed him to immediately recognize her as a dirthenara, priestess of not only her clan but all the People, traveling Thedas to spread her wisdom to the scattered through song, and he responded with immediate welcome. 

“Andaran atish’an, sweet sister. It is good to see another of the People, in this place from which we all came.” This Keeper and his clan had suffered much, Solas could see, from their dwindling numbers and damaged aravels. 

“What troubles you, hahren?” sang the priestess of fire, ready to come to this elder’s aid in his suffering. The keeper sighed and began to recount tales of losses suffered by his clan through the indirect scars of war, of rockslides, errant spirits in a graveyard and a foolhardy First who took the clan’s strongest to the Emerald Graves leaving them undefended, casually burdening her with his own sorrows as the keepers had become accustomed when greeted with the helpful warbles of the dirthenara. 

With an ancient song of valor, she pledged her support to his causes, promising to ease his burdens before the next night fell. Her voice was so much louder than it had been this morning, before the incident with the lyrium shard. The blood crystal had strengthened her song magic, infusing her with power even as it took from her part of her own life force. 

Her promise ringing in the ears of the clan, all eyes on her, she began an ancient ritual, casting from her staff a small revolving orb of green flame into the clan’s hearth, a stable ball of veilfire mimicking the nature of the world itself, coaxing wriggling tendrils of gentle spirit-flame from its center with her bare fingers as she had by the veilfire torch at their camp before Skyhold. Her voice rang out in a lyricless cadence as she focused her will on the flames in her grasp, carefully molding the solid glowing tendrils extending from the fireball to create… a sword and shield? 

No, it was a delicately wrought lyre, its gossamer strings vibrating with a hum as she perfected her design and drew her spirit-instrument from the hearth with a flourish, a performance she had given to countless clans before. He wondered if there were indeed any other dirthenera with such skills in craftsmanship, the followers of Sylaise usually ignoring the gifts of a god such as June, or if her unique circumstances in being given to a clan of mageless craftsmen had granted her a great deal of unique ability in turn. 

She positioned the lyre at her hip, but as she began to sing the elvhen song of loss the shemlen only knew as “Once We Were”, the instrument moved as if of its own accord and flew into the air out of her reach as Sera gave a loud and frightened gasp. 

Sulahn’nehn looked surprised at the intrusion, but did not cease her song, watching the lyre above her carefully as it played along to her voice by some invisible hand. Again, her song had reached the spirits and pulled them lovingly through the Veil, this one a kind spirit who wished only to rejoice in song by her side on her path. _Vir Sulahn’nehn._ She had begun to forge her own path, a wisdom thought lost for centuries. Few gods still saw their paths followed; as the warring Herald, she had strayed too far from Sylaise's pacifist _Vir Atish'an_ to look back now. 

She did not look afraid, but smiled as she played mentally with the bounds of their brief musical partnership, the spirit alternately slowing and speeding its strumming to her cues without any visible suggestion.  
  
They reached the song’s natural end, the elven clan clearly enjoying the mystical spectacle they had heard about only in fragmented stories, and Sulahn’nehn sang now to her lyre and the spirit that held it, thanking it for playing with her but guiding it back to the world beyond. She raised a hand, dissembling her magical construct into wisps of flame as the spirit departed. 

“ _Ir abelas, da’len_. My First apparently left for the Graves without fully setting our wards. Your performance was enlightening to us all, despite the intrusion of unwelcome spirits” said the sheepish looking Keeper as the air in the camp settled.  
  
She simply shook her head as she gathered her belongings. In the wake of her song, the silence of the copse was given peace. She looked exhausted from her performance, but knew her bounds, singing her words even as Solas knew she ached to speak them. 

“ _Melana sahlin, hahren_. Time has come, and we have much to do, if I am to fulfil your promise.” It was an easy exit, a reminder of their purpose, a welcome escape for the beautiful woman who shouldered the burdens of too many. As they explored the Promised Land in slowly dwindling daylight, she walked beside him in stony silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song I listened to while imagining the Song of Lyrium is [Dust to Dust from the Final Fantasy XIII OST](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Dgj83Q-50). That unearthly soprano. Mmmm.
> 
> This is a pretty important chapter as far as stuff that leads in to the sequel!


	6. In Uthenera na Revas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a chat about her new Knight-Enchanter specialization, Solas and Sulahn'nehn are interrupted by the abuse of an elven servant. Later, she gathers all the Skyhold elves for an important meeting.

Sulahn’nehn interrupted Solas's studies yet again, jumping from Leliana’s rookery through his wards onto his precious, carefully arranged artifacts and tomes with recklessly childish abandon, glowing ever brighter with a new power. She had withdrawn from them all in the past weeks, studying and training intensely with Commander Helaine daily and seeking out his company in the Fade by night, and as she landed this time her physical body shimmered into a wisp as she cloaked herself within the fade, a power once reserved for the ancient elven bodyguards of the gods to grant them invulnerability in battle. He sighed in exasperation at her favored form of indiscreet entrance as he marveled at how her command of mysteries he had thought lost to their people grew ever more skillful. It would be good to tell her, if she did not already know. He doubted the Circle would admit its appropriation of elven magic.  
  
“The new power you wield. I heard from Cassandra that it is the magic of the knight-enchanter? If I am not mistaken, the techniques descend from ancient elven mages called arcane warriors. I wonder what they would think to see their magic used in defense of the Chantry.” He was glad to see the technique in the hands of a proud elf again, even if they had mutated through the Chantry’s vision, just as the sacred songs to elvhen gods were molded into Chantry hymns. 

“I doubt they were called ‘arcane warriors’ in Elven,” she replied sarcastically. Did she not even know the term? Even with all the elvhen she understood, she knew so little. The cult she loved so dearly even had their own insult for the path. “The formal name for the techniques you have learned was the dirth’ena enasalin, knowledge that led to victory. Mages who eschewed physical confrontation called it ghilan’him banal’vhen, the path that leads astray.”

He watched as she unsheathed her spirit sword and gazed at it with understanding, testing the air against its spectral density. “Ghilan’him banal’vhen. That’s what Sylaise’s followers would have called it, right? Those that followed the Vir Atish’an and eschewed violence against others?” 

She sighed, shimmering as she practiced fading into the veil and back again. “I don’t think I have the right to follow the Vir Atish’an any more. I’ve killed so many people over the past few months, more than some Dalish do over their whole lives unless there’s a war, certainly more than any dirthenara or hearthkeeper ever would. I need to find a new path to follow.” She sheathed her blade of blinding light, reduced to an ornate hilt, and walked back toward him.

“What can you tell me about the dirth’ena enasalin?” she asked him casually, leaning against his desk as he rearranged the now-crumpled papers she had ingloriously scattered at her entrance. 

“They were elite guardsmen, serving as champions or bodyguards for nobles… as I understand,” he replied tersely, bending to pick up a book that now splayed screaming spine-up on the plaster-specked floor. He remembered so many, now dead, noble in their efforts to protect those they loved most above all. Silent but fierce Abelas, champion to Mythal, his ally in the chaotic time after she was murdered in uthenera. Noble Assan, champion to Andruil, slain by her own hand in her madness. This world no longer knew or appreciated such devotion.  
  
He himself had overlooked them out of pride while the empire still stood, a god who needed no bodyguard, one who would instead choose to guard them all as his statues now watched over the world. 

“Mages who focused on spirits or the Fade might sneer at their physicality, but never doubted their honor. They were the living embodiment of will made manifest, mind shaping the body into the perfect weapon.” He sadly surveyed the beautiful dirthenera as he spoke: a lifelong priestess of the way of peace, thrust into war to be molded into a weapon against her will. 

None of this would have happened to her without his mark, without his mistake. It should have been his burden to bear. But she shouldered her burdens with intensity, taking it upon herself to close every rift they could find and preparing to face Corypheus without fear. Like her proud, struggling people, she was utterly indomitable. 

“I can’t imagine the ancient elves would be happy to see their techniques used by Chantry mages, even if I am their kin” said the fire-kissed elf wryly. 

_This_ ancient elf was pleased their techniques had lasted long enough to reach _her_. “Perhaps they would surprise you. So much knowledge has been lost… Perhaps having something they created carried forward, even in such a different form, would gratify them.” 

She smiled and nodded her head in hope, staring aside wistfully. She would use this gift well, and wisely, and his people would have been proud. He had not forgotten her careful aid in freeing his friend from the confines of spiritual slavery in Enavuris, nor her peaceful voice as she calmed his fury against the mages. The quiet of the round chamber was quickly broken as a serving girl burst into the room, panting.

“My lady Inquisitor! Please, help! My sister, she…” the elven girl cried out, interrupted by a piercing wail from the courtyard. Sulahn’nehn beckoned to him to follow as she strode out of the room in determination to follow the girl. They bounded down the stairs to the courtyard of Skyhold, where a red-faced former Templar stood, his arm aloft as he held a very young serving girl in the air by an ear.  
  
“Stupid fucking knife-ear! I know you stole my locket! Now give it back!” he shouted, ignorant to the whispering crowd that had begun to gather as the Inquisitor strode up behind him. In her controlled anger, she was a force to behold, the flame of her staff rising well above the banners scattered around the grassy yard. She tapped on his shoulder with one hand, spirit sword already raised in the other.  
  
“Is there a problem?” she said, mildly, her voice expressing a calmness in opposition to her fiery countenance. The once-proud Templar stood in shock at the sight of the Inquisitor herself, his arm still dangling the poor child by the ear as she screamed and struggled from his grip. Sulahn’nehn motioned towards the girl in a casual gesture, and he loosened his grip as the crying child crumpled to the floor and bounded toward the kitchen. 

“She stole my locket, your Worship,” muttered the defeated-looking man bashfully as the gathered crowd looked on. 

“Do you have any proof of this, or did you lose it and blame the _knife-ear?_ ” spat the Inquisitor, her voice brimming with a venom Solas had not yet had cause to experience. 

“Senna, please go to this man’s quarters and find his locket.” The serving girl who brought them to the scene bowed her head and scurried away, leaving the man alone with her fury. 

“She must have stolen it!” the man exclaimed defensively. “You’re different, you’re chosen by Andraste, your Worship, but your people are scum, they’re all liars and thieves and…”  
  
She did not allow him to continue. Solas observed with unease as the fury consumed her body, her barrier exploding into flame and sending a spire of fiery light skyward past the highest parapets of Skyhold as she advanced toward the man aflame, red glyph curling into form beneath his feet, with her sword raised. As the blast ended, the man was nowhere to be seen, and Sulahn’nehn stood unwavering above a pile of ashes in the center of the awe and horror-struck crowd, her fury easing as the flame surrounding her crept back toward her heart. Her hair was on fire in places; she put it out impatiently with her sleeve as charred fragments fell to the floor. Noticing the panic on their faces, she addressed the crowd directly, her clear voice resonating through the courtyard.  


“Let this be a lesson to those who deign to look down upon the elven, for my people have been and will be again greater than you could ever hope to imagine. If you bear ill will to my people, you bear ill will to me, and have no place among the Inquisition.”  
  
The serving girl, Senna, returned from the soldier’s quarters, bearing a dingy old locket aloft. 

“I found it, my lady! It was…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed the pile of ash by the Inquisitor’s feet. 

Sulahn’nehn smiled and held out her hand. “I will take it, da’len. Thank you. This man had no right to call himself a soldier of our cause.” The girl shakily smiled and nodded. “Come with me, da’len, I have an interesting proposition for you.”

Solas nodded a farewell as the singed singer led the awestruck serving girl toward the tavern, ignoring the whispers of the Orlesian nobles she always avoided as they passed. No doubt to confer with Sera. Sulahn'nehn's uncontrollable magical expression of her fury had alarmed him; untamed, it could consume her, or worse. 

He hoped she had the wisdom to curtail her emotions in the future, though he could not fault her for her anger. Her reaction had reminded him of himself, in a way; a much younger firebrand of an elf, acting out of passion without the restraint granted by time and painful mistakes.

Solas was curious as to her plans for the elven servants of Skyhold; Sulahn'nehn spoke often of her care for the city elves and their plight, how her clan had camped outside Wycome to offer a place of solace for those elves embittered by city life and their lowly place in shemlen society. The uprising and slaughter of elves in Halamshiral before the explosion at the Conclave had affected her greatly, she admitted to him, and had been the main reason she had Keeper was urged to act. Istmaethoriel Lavellan, a skilled diplomat and merchant, had sent her to spy on the shemlen in case another event killed her people by the hundreds. She had no idea what the Conclave would inflict upon them all. 

In the Fade, as they walked through ancient memories he carefully curated for his own lack of involvement, she had shared her fantasies of revolutions to come, a new place for the city elves and Dalish elves alike to once again call their home and recall the mysteries they had lost. She spoke so scornfully of the shemlen nobles she had met and their lazy, unproductive ways of life; she bemoaned the subjugation of her people that placed them barely above slavery, for a meager pay with no home to return to and no food to eat could not help her struggling people to rise above their lowly positions. 

Her goals were so similar to his own, yet so fundamentally different. His own vision also restored the glory of Arlathan, but only for the elvhen who yet lay trapped in the Abyss by his own hand. It was his task to return to them what he had taken, to right his ancient wrong, not to give to these new elves what his own people had lost before their existence. To follow her was to betray himself. 

But he could not help but admire her rebellious spirit. Had he met her as a passionate youth, he would have given himself to her whole-heartedly and honestly, something he could barely resist now in all the self-control he had gained. She spoke of freedom in a way that reminded him of himself. An arrogant, proud young man, who led brutal rebellions against the slavers of Arlathan, noble blood running down the market's spires as the fearful slaves ran for their lives. 

That night, instead of calling to him from the Fade as he was now accustomed, Sulahn’nehn burst into his quarters to rouse him excitedly. He noted the burned sides of her hair were now shaved bare, her blood-red locks rising in a narrow birdlike plume along her scalp. She would do better to shave it bald, as was the custom of his people. Hair often interfered with magic, an unnecessary annoyance. “Come, hahren! I have the most wonderful thing to show you! Come to the courtyard, please!”

“Ma nuvenin,” muttered the ancient elf, wiping sleep from his grey-blue eyes. Solas rose from his couch and followed the sprightly young elf outside, watching her steps rebound with joy. How could she be so awake, at this hour? The young… She took his hand, entwining her warm fingers into his in a gesture of unbridled affection that made his heart leap, and led him down the stairs to a small fire-lit clearing in the courtyard where fragrant moss and elfroot had been carefully braided into a cushiony circle around a hearth.

A pedestal of twisted rashvine rope stood in the center, magically protected from the hearth’s fire. She must have spent the past few hours preparing this area; none of the elves of Skyhold could craft such a Dalish paradise from so little. A number of elves, including Sera, had gathered in the clearing, bare-faced and wondering, their large eyes flashing in the darkness and firelight. 

Sulahn’nehn pulled her hand away from his as she entered the clearing ahead of him, nimbly jumping onto the pedestal. The fire-resistant barrier protecting her dais extended itself to her as she basked in the hearth’s warmth, drawing it into herself and stoking it in turn by the strength of her own fires. She had fashioned the clearing in the manner of a hearthkeeper and took the dirthenara’s ritualistic place, but rather than singing, she _spoke_ to the gathered elves who knew nothing of the Dalish custom, free in her own castle to sing later when the time came.

“You might be wondering why I gathered you all here tonight. I know you’re all city elves. I know you have suffered much in the wars that drove you from your homes. I want you all to know that _this_ is your home now, and I welcome you all, as well as any elves you know who seek a safe place to settle, city elf or Dalish. We have much space within, and much unused land surrounding the castle. We have no limits in population. As long as an elf stands as leader in Skyhold, the Inquisition will stand for the elves. And if you wish to learn of the old ways, I will be glad to teach you myself, although you are free to practice your own beliefs as you please.”  
  
The gathered crowd erupted in cheers and applause at the statement, quickly muffled by the impropriety of the hour; she fully quieted them with a motion of her marked hand.  
  
“You have all heard my voice more than enough over these months. It is time for me to hear yours. Please, share your lives with me. I wish to learn from your wisdom.”  
  
Solas listened as the elves began to relate tales of suffering and cruelty at the hands of the shemlen that subjugated them en masse. Many of those now serving the Inquisition by working in Skyhold were former servants of Orlesian nobles, and had harrowing tales of the indecencies inflicted upon them by proud heirs. Some were former slaves of Tevinter, freed in battle, and their tales of blood magic were the saddest of all. 

Solas listened in quiet agony to each elf’s story, every one of them ultimately affected by _his_ mistake, their lives a shadow of the glory they could have experienced. Even Sera told of life as an orphan during the Blight, a hopelessly desolate beginning he had not realized shaped the nature of her irreverent spirit. 

As the last elf in the circle finished their tale, all eyes returned to Sulahn’nehn, who now crouched low on the pedestal, head bowed into her knees. When she rose, her face was streaked with tears. 

“We have all lost so much. But there is always hope to come. I want to sing you a song of our people, a song of hope after loss, a song that reminds us what we have to live for,” she said gently to the crowd, drawing her fade-lyre quickly from the hearth as she spoke. 

She began to pluck a soft arpeggio on the spectral strings, stronger now in her mastery of the spectral sword that in its essence was no different from her lyre, and her voice soared through Skyhold as she stood high on her woven pedestal and began the first verse of “In Uthenera Na Revas”.

“Hahren na melana sahlin,” she trilled soulfully, as Solas closed his eyes and willed himself to stay awake. This song never failed to put him to sleep, beautiful as it was. As was the song’s intent. It had been crafted for his kin, the Dreamer mages, to guide them peacefully into uthenera, and as she sang to them all he found himself drifting once again toward the sleep of ages. This would certainly not do. He tried to stay awake by focusing on the song itself, its lyrics, rather than the siren call of its melody.

“Emma ir abelas, souver'inan isala hamin…” Now I am filled with sorrow. Weary eyes need resting. He remembered a day when those words meant more to him than they ever had, when he forced every ounce of magic within him into remaking the world to keep his people safe. The day when, drained of all hope and power, his empire crumbling around him, he closed his weary eyes to the next thousand years.

“Vhenan him dor’felas. In uthenera na revas.” The heart is slowing, greying; in waking sleep is freedom. When he could do no more, when his guilt bore him down like the weight of a mountain, only the respite of his dreams could free him from himself. And when he awoke, the world was somehow worse than it had been, all because of him. His people were mere mortals, again enslaved, subjugated, relegated to weak facsimiles of the true might of elves. And worse, all their glory and might had been completely forgotten, relics of an ancient time. Nothing of his past remained.

The surging of her voice brought him back to the present. She treated this part of the song differently, he noticed. The first section had been sorrowful, wistful in tone; a eulogy to the dead, as the Dalish now treated it. But this part rang triumphant, her lyre growing louder in crescendo as she sang the refrain that she had always borne a direct connection to. 

“Vir sulahn’nehn! Vir dirthera! Vir samahl la numin, vir lath sa’vunin” she sang joyously, true to the spirit of the words, clearly reveling in her favorite part of the song. We sing and rejoice. We tell the tales. We laugh and cry. We love one more day. Her words rang straight into his heart and he sat up in surprise at his own surge of hope. The final verse was for those left behind, those still awake to tend to the cares of the world while their elders lay dreaming, a reminder to live their own lives to the fullest in their elder’s stead.

He had always paid more attention to the first part of the song, rarely still awake by the second verse. But now his old friends were gone, and he was the one left behind. And now that the Dalish elders passed straight through the state of uthenera to the beyond, never to return, the words rang more poignant still. As she repeated the refrain, singing her own name just a little louder amid the other words, Solas began to truly appreciate her presence, as much as misfortune had brought her into his long life. 

For it was this hope that had gone unkindled for too long, this part of the song he never thought about when he considered retreating to the peace of uthenera in frustration. She always reminded him of the beauty of the present even when he yearned so much for the past. 

Vir sulahn’nehn. We sing and rejoice. A double meaning when given a proper noun, as the word had when his vhenan was born and named. For the word ‘vir’ also meant ‘way’ or ‘path’ in the manner that many follow the same goal. Her true path, not the Vir Atish’an she had been taught to tread and now eschewed out of guilt, a path of her own that would be followed for years to come. Vir Sulahn’nehn, the path of rejoiceful song. With her actions on this night, that path would surely not be a lonely one for her.

As her song drew to a close, she stepped from her dais, drawing her fires back into her as she had earlier. She bent to hug the small girl, Alessa, the former Templar had bullied earlier, and bade them all safe passage. The gathered group of elves slowly dispersed, leaving Solas, Sera and the Inquisitor in the clearing.

“That was pretty cool, yeah? Bit heavy on the elfy shite, but it was nice to hear the little people get a word in,” said Sera, giving the Inquisitor a friendly but disrespectful elbow to the rib. 

“I’ve wanted to do this since we got here,” said the flame-haired bard, her voice warm with confidence and joy. “There are so many elves working here, but they’re afraid to speak to anyone. They should be treated like equals. I know Josephine and Vivienne say that’s not how it is in Orlais, but this isn’t Orlais, this is the Inquisition, and we’re better than that.”

“Hear hear!” Sera yawned, the yawn mangling her statement as she stretched and scratched her head. “I’m going to bed now, it’s bloody late. See you.” The elf strolled lazily back to the tavern. Solas turned toward the main hall, but stopped at the warm hand on his arm.

“What did you think, hahren?” she asked softly behind him as they walked together up the stairs to the main hall. 

Did she seek his approval? Her plans were noble, but still too directly at odds with his own for him to truly agree. If he could discourage her from gathering the elves into a free nation, he could prevent their freedoms from being sorely taken away once his goal was reached. For Fen'Harel knew that his brethren would not awaken gently, their lands and slaves now lost to them. The gods _had_ to awaken, as soon as he reclaimed his orb. It was his fault, and his wrong to right, no matter the consequences. His guilt would never leave, no matter if he succeeded or failed, for he could not bear to see the world itself flounder after the loss of his brethren. But he knew all too well the cruelty and pride of his own brothers and sisters; he could not bear to see these quickling elves suffer _more._

“Hearing the stories of the elves that live here was enlightening. I have encountered many of them around Skyhold without giving thought to their lives. They are lucky to have one so compassionate as a leader.” 

Her eyes shone at his words as she smiled back at him. “The elves suffer all over Thedas. We’ve lost our land, our customs, our magic. I’ve spent my life knowing that. I’m in a position where I have some power to fix that, and it’s all I’ve ever truly wanted to do. I know Corypheus is a threat, but if he destabilizes the empire in his madness… it could make room for a new one.” She was so much wiser than he had expected. But this new fantasy empire of hers, elven as it would claim to be, could not stand against the reckoning he was about to bring upon the world.  
  
They stopped at the door to his rotunda, Solas turning to his sweet priestess with a smile. “I will leave you here, da’len. It has been a long night for us both.” 

She pouted petulantly. Had she planned to follow him in? It would be most unwise. “Will you… visit me, tonight, hahren? In the Fade? I’d like to see something new.” she asked almost seductively, her eyes looking up at him through those dark lashes. 

“Ma nuvenin. Dareth shiral, da’len.” he responded, instinctively lifting a hand to caress her narrow shoulder before he abruptly entered his chambers and closed the door behind him.


	7. Song of Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas ponders the origin of Sulahn'nehn's personality, and talks to her on her balcony. They kiss, and do the nasty. Finally!

The days passed, Skyhold’s population gradually increasing as the word of the Inquisitor’s kindness to the elves spread. Destitute leaf-eared refugees of the war, shunned or mistreated by human refugee camps in the Dales, came by the caravan load. Solas barely noticed it, as happy as he was in the quiet confines of his rotunda, which slowly grew more beautiful and vibrant as he poured his mind into depicting Sulahn’nehn’s story on the bare white walls. 

But the chatter outside his door grew ever louder, and he noticed many new faces enter in an attempt to clean his chamber before he sent them away. The bounties produced by the kitchen staff increased tenfold. For all her promises, many of the elves here were still servants. But to hear her speak of it, to give them a job with generous pay in a kind environment was the greatest gift she could offer at the time, with the little influence she had at court.

And they had opportunities here; entire families were given roles within the Inquisition, strong sons training in the yard as soldiers while clever daughters learned the way of the surgeon. Dalish elves, too, had begun to gather at the fortress, most choosing to live outside the castle walls, forming a line of defense with their war-torn aravels clan by sparse clan while some sought positions within. She had become a true leader, revered by her people for more practical reasons than the shemlen worshipped their Herald of Andraste. 

Skyhold was already becoming something new, something the elven people had not experienced in years since the Exalted Marches took from them their promised land. A place to simply _be,_ safe and happy, free of shackles or cruel noble employers. All due to her compassionate choice to welcome them in, at cost to her own military efforts, a cost she was more than happy to pay despite Cassandra and Cullen’s protests, so loud he could hear them through the war room.

Had she always been so wise, this young one? His thoughts returned to that which made him most uncomfortable. Her rebellious, passionate spirit. Her cunning wisdom. Both things that drew him to her, made him admire her. But he had not known her before the mark, and she had dedicated her life to Sylaise. He knew how the Dalish now chose their vallaslin, having attempted to entreat with them in the past. They chose to follow the god that best signified who they were, who they wished to be. Never himself, of course, for he had designed no vallaslin to bind them. Their vallaslin, ancient in its bindings, now marked them in their culture as an archetype of personality.

A follower of Sylaise was immediately recognizable as peaceful, graceful and melodious like the great fire of a well-stoked hearth through the tendrils of flame caressing her face, and Sulahn’nehn _was_ often these things, but she was different. More. She could cool the anger of others with her gentle voice, but her own rage burned uncontrollably when sparked. She was no longer a pacifist, blasting away her mortal foes without moral objection, but she did not relish in violence. She could be ruthless, and kind. 

She loved to sing, but only sang when she wished to. She walked with fragile grace when she chose, with a commanding stride when she angered, and fell into his chambers with wild abandon when her mischievous spirit desired to breach the tranquility of his surroundings. In battle, she fade-cloaked as she flitted toward her foes with her spirit sword raised in daunting determination, and in camp she flirted and giggled with him like the sweet young girl she truly was.

Somewhere, she had learned to be more than a mere follower of the Vir Atish’an. Was it… _his_ wisdom, that she had gained, through his mark? It was never meant to be carried by anyone but him. She was so rebellious, so earnest in her love of freedom, so... familiar. 

He had searched his whole life for one like her, one he considered his kindred spirit, and thousands of years later found her in the one who held his mark. What if it had changed her entirely as a person, his own long-gathered will and cunning seeping into her through the mark in her hand? What if the element that most attracted him to this little elf was, in fact, _himself?_

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft creak as the object of his affections opened his door and stepped inside, quietly and nimbly, to seek his company yet again. “Inquisitor, I was…” _Just thinking about you._ “Do you have a moment?” He gestured to the door again, and they walked together to the privacy of her chambers, where Dorian and Leliana could not spy on their conversation to gossip later.

“What were you like before the anchor?” he asked her, his arm resting on her balcony as he surveyed the majestic mountains that unfolded around them. “Has it affected you? Changed you in any way? Your mind, your morals, your… spirit?” He had to know. What if she was entirely different before? 

“If it had, do you really think I’d have noticed?” she replied sarcastically, eyebrow raising at his question. True, indeed, the change would have been unmistakeable from mere personal growth. Perhaps he did not give her enough credit; as she had told him, she had experienced much in her young age to change and grow as a person, and he knew she had experienced more upheavals than many Dalish saw in their lifetimes in less than a year. 

“No, that’s an excellent point,” admitted the ancient elf, smiling. She was so intelligent. He could speak to her as an equal, in a way he could not with so many. 

“Why do you ask?” pressed the beautiful young elf, her narrow stream of crimson hair glinting like a flaming arrow in the sunset.

“You show a wisdom I have not seen since…” The days of Arlathan. No Dalish elf had come so close to the forgotten glories of his people, in magical ability nor in measured action. 

It would not do to admit his own part, not just yet. He wanted to tell her the truth so badly. For a moment, he considered it. A brief, sorely repressed moment. 

“Since my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade.” An easy excuse now, not far from the truth, as only his memories in the Fade now shaped the remnants of Arlathan that lay out of reach to all but him. Somehow, this shining beacon of light and hope had drawn him from the depths of his memories to the present. “You are not what I expected.”

She wriggled her eyebrows at him, playfully twisting his meaning as she always did. “Sorry to disappoint.” She laughed as he frowned, fingers twisting in the ends of her hair that now streamed past one shoulder. 

“It’s not disappointing, it’s…” Solas sighed. “Most people are predictable. You have shown subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I expected. If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours… have I misjudged them?” 

She smiled back at him, her hand raising to her own face to proudly touch the blood-red scars left by her cruel vallaslin, an action that filled him with regret and a burning desire to tell her the truth of them. “I don’t hold the Dalish up as perfect, but we have something worth honoring. A memory of the ancient ways.” 

Indeed, the Dalish had preserved as much as they could through the genocide and razing they faced, as meager as their culture became. She had dedicated so much of her young life to learning more on behalf of their people, traveling to universities and chantries to memorize lost tomes. She understood more than most of them. 

“Perhaps that is it. I suppose it must be. Most people act with so little understanding of the world. But not you.”

“So what does this mean, Solas?” she murmured, those yellow-green eyes boring into his own, filling his mind with their beauty. 

“It means I have not forgotten the kiss,” he softly replied, as she began to gracefully step toward him, eyes focused on him alone. 

“Good,” she whispered, raising her chin so close to his as she mimicked his posture, pressing her hands far behind her in a gesture of open-heartedness. Her red-marked face looked so beautiful in the light of the sunset, rosebud lips breathlessly parting as she waited impatiently for his move, for a kiss in the waking world. 

He wanted her, so, so badly, the fragrant smell of smoke reaching his nostrils as he stood paralyzed above her, but the first kiss had been ill-considered, and a second… He could not lose sight of his plans, and she had to focus on defeating Corypheus. This dalliance would pose a distraction to them both.

He shook his head and turned to leave, trying to force himself out of her alluring presence before he lost control of his senses. But her warm hand stopped at his arm, loving heat emanating from her slender fingers, as she whispered to him to stay. 

“It would be kinder in the long run,” Solas said, back still turned to her beauty out of fear of his own desires. 

“But losing you would…” As her hand began to caress his arm, he could no longer hold himself back. Not when she touched him like that, when her eyes and smile and soft, moss-scented skin overwhelmed his every thought. He found himself turning swiftly, pulling her into his arms, gathering her ever tighter as he kissed her deeply. She kissed him back with enthusiasm, her soft lips breaking from his own to scatter sweet pecks of affection around his mouth and nose before returning to his lips to explore their depths.

This kiss was so much more than their earlier tryst in the Fade, no less passionate but filled with the beauties of the physical world that the Fade itself jealously lacked. There, she had been herself, sweet and yearning, but here she was warm, alive, her strong young heartbeat declaring itself as she pressed against the opposing beat that drummed beneath his skin. 

Before, she had filled his thoughts, but now she filled his every sense, her slender body writhing against him ardently, her soft hair fragranced by tree moss and smoke, the gentle moans she uttered as he caressed her perfect form, her tongue so sweet and warm against his own.

He had not felt like this in thousands of years. A stirring deep inside him growled at him for more, to take this sweet offering that was being granted so willingly. He was losing control, succumbing to his basest desires, a primal want he had held under control for years beyond counting. Solas pulled away from his little heart, strong arms holding her yearning form at bay. 

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he said to her wistfully, powerful words he had never expected to say to one born of this age. He had already overstepped his bounds, done too much. She was the Inquisitor, and he was Fen’Harel. They both had much work to do. As he turned back towards the stairwell, face solemn in dejection at his own fears, she followed him. She was not going to let him escape easily, this little one.

“Solas. Wait.” The commanding seduction in her tone startled him enough that he turned back to look at her. A mistake. A great mistake, for she had already begun to unbutton the tunic she wore around Skyhold, a knowing smile curling around her lips as she let the rich fabric cascade to the floor. Her body was unmarked, a quality that proved she was neither slave nor ruler, but proudly Dalish; the slaves of Arlathan had marked their entire bodies, but the Dalish in their devotion only left their faces marred.

He was thankful for that, as the waning sunlight from the balcony kissed beams of orange and red against her smooth, pale skin, leaving shadows that emphasized her every slender curve. He stood awestruck at her beauty, hand still poised to venture down the stairs, as she cast off her leg-garments and approached him, confident in her nakedness. 

“Isn’t this what you want?” she murmured, pressing her naked body against his simple tunic as she embraced him again, caressing his head with her delicate fingers. “I know it’s what I want. And I don’t want you in the Fade first. I want to create a memory that’s real.”

“I… ah…” Solas began to choke out a protest, but his mind was too fogged by desire to invent a new excuse. He finally gave up the struggle against his own desires, a whispered “ma nuvenin” escaping from his lips before pulling Sulahn’nehn toward him and pressing her into the rough stone wall to his right as he kissed her. His restraint was slipping from him entirely now, and the younger elf clearly relished in his passion, egging him on, nimble fingers slipping under his tunic to guide the fabric up and away.

She focused her interest to his smooth, bare chest, kissing along his collarbone and breast bone until she came to the ancient wolf jaw he wore to declare himself to the world, carefully loosening the leather ties that bound it while examining the bone itself, fascination briefly distracting her from her ardor. If she had cause to question his divine totem, she did not do so now, carefully placing it on a side table before taking his hand and leading him to her ornate Orlesian-style bed, where she stretched out before him, beckoning.

As he kneeled onto the bed to lie beside her, she scrambled toward him, grinning. “Ma lath,” she murmured, the loving words tingling against his skin as she began to kiss his bare thighs. Without another word, she took him into her mouth, waves of pleasure surging through him as he rocked against her crouched body. He felt himself growing inside her warm mouth and throat, a unique sensation that caused a growl to escape from his lips and a muffled giggle from his heart in response. He pulled himself away from her and picked her up gently, tossing her back onto the many pillows of the overly ornate bed.

“Will you be gentle, ma lath?” she asked shyly, her back yet arching in desire on the bed. “I’ve… never actually done this before, with a man at least.” Solas stopped in guilt at her words. Truly, a virgin? He knew she was young, but surely she had been with some boy in the past. Or girl, as it transpired. He could not take this precious gift from her. He had already taken so much from her people. He frowned, sitting back. 

“Are you sure about this? It is not a gift that can be returned.”

She sat up to lean toward him, taking his hands in hers as she kissed his face. “I am certain. _Ar lath ma._ ” 

She guided him back down over her forcefully, pressing her body up against his as he pressed down against the bed in turn. He succumbed to her intense will and his latent desires, guiding himself toward her, touching her gently with patience and trepidation. She was much smaller than him, and this could hurt. He would have to be ready to heal her later. As he slowly entered her, she gave in to him with a joyful gasp, sucking and kissing his neck and collarbone with abandon. He responded with careful passion, restraining himself from truly taking her as roughly as he wished. He would have to be delicate with his little vhenan… for now.

As his passion drew to a head, he was careful to spill himself far away from her, onto a spare piece of embroidered cloth adorning her great bedspread, in fear of what creature might be wrought. She did not notice, panting in ecstasy in the mountain of pillows as she recovered from their tryst. He laid down beside her, kissing her closed eyelids and marked cheeks as his hand hovered over her, healing the fruit of his fervor. She opened her almond-shaped green eyes and smiled at him, raising a small hand to caress his cheekbone. 

“Stay with me tonight, ma lath?” she whispered, and Solas nodded, pulling her close as he settled into her luxurious bed and prepared to visit her again in the Fade, his mind already set on a preferred activity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would not have let him walk off. Stupid egg. Come back here.


	8. Song of Cunning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor's group visit Halamshiral and kick ass at The Grand Game. On the way, Sulahn'nehn and Solas slip into the Fade for a little private time. Heavy smut warning!

Solas looked down at his uncomfortable red formal suit coat with disdain. It did not fit. In his foolishness, he had waited to try it on until this late moment, focusing instead on studying his new tomes. While the pantaloons were fine enough, his coat was simply too big. He tugged at the belt, ultimately settling on tying it at his waist before buckling it, but there was no use. It still hung a little loose on his slender frame, made for a shemlen man, its shoulders just slightly too big, imperceptible to others but embarrassing to him. The excess fabric bunched at his back with his tightened belt in an ungainly manner. He was displeased.

They were soon to attend a party of the court at the ancient elven palace of Halamshiral, the Inquisitor and her honorable retinue in tow. He had not been at court since the days of Arlathan, when the emperor and empress were gods, resplendent in their glimmering golden temple-palace, truly worshipped, not simply followed or loved, by their empire. He was, admittedly, excited, although his actions at Arlathan would surely have given the shemlen cause to bar him from their gates. But they had business to do, and the Inquisitor’s honor guard had to be stealthy and unremarkable. And his suit did not fit him, a fact that gave him great consternation, although he knew the shemlen would be too focused on his foreign elven features to notice his uniform.

And to make matters worse, the Inquisitor now leaped into his room in her handmade crimson gown, giggling, carrying aloft a ridiculous helmet.

“Solas, ma lath, I got you a present for the ball,” she tittered as she pranced towards him, gorgeous features fully made up in striking contrast, thrusting the accursed helmet into his arms. “It’s the Helm of the Drasca. I bought it for a pretty penny in the Hissing Wastes, do you remember?”

“I do recall, yes. Why, ma vhenan, do you wish me to wear this headpiece on this particular night?” asked the elf bitterly, annoyed enough by his costume to add yet another element to his mortification.

“It was worn by the Drasca, an order of rebellious warriors. They first resisted Tevinter, they resisted the Blight, and finally they resisted Orlais in the Anders rebellion. I doubt most Orlesian nobles will recognize it”, she said casually, smoothing her delicate skirts from her ungainly landing. “I wanted one of our retinue to wear it, as a subtle affront to the court of Orlais, because I intend to favor Briala tonight.” Her smile spread wicked and knowing across her lips like a proud cat astride its prey as she continued matter-of-factly. “And I gave it to you, because I love you.”

A subtle act of rebellion. He loved to seek them out in the Fade, having spent most of his youth committing them, and here was his love declaring blasphemy against an empire right in front of him with a helmet made to honor the very thing he loved most.. He was so proud of her in that moment that he actually put the blasted helmet on, wincing as its tightness dug into him. He rarely wore any headdress nowadays save the Seer’s Cowl she had found for him in a tomb, and he was certainly unused to such a heavy carapace of metal pressing on his mind. But he would wear this, for her, if she wished it.

“It looks… great on you,” she giggled. Solas doubted the sincerity of her words, but accepted the sincerity of her kiss as she briefly threw her arms around him. She pulled back and laughed again as she wiped a red oily substance away from his lips with her bare wrist. “Sorry, I’m not used to wearing this stuff.”

“I can sympathize,” said Solas wryly, wiping the rest of the substance away with a fragment of canvas on his desk, his new helmet still digging into his bare head. It was too small for him, as the suit was too big. He would give it to someone with a smaller head when this charade was over; perhaps Blackwall would appreciate its obvious power.

“Do you think the court will treat us badly, as elves?” she asked, her unusually dark eyelids heavy with a new worry. He took her by the waist. “You are the Inquisitor. the fabled Herald of Andraste. Any ill behavior toward you at court would shame them. And I can take care of myself, if need be. Most likely, they will not notice me at all, or mistake me for your servant and respect me a little in turn.” He soothed her with his voice as he caressed her carefully curled and coiffed hair, stubble growing in slightly from the sides where she had shaved it to create a fiery fuzz on her scalp.

She was a marvel in her finery, her red velveteen bodice richly embroidered with elven curlicues in glimmering lustrous cotton thread, skirts of dyed Orlesian chiffon and heavy dragon webbing layered endlessly, delicately knotted red rashvine ropes covering little of her bare feet. He knew she had crafted it herself from the hours she chose to spend beside him in his study sewing as he painted his fresco, the two lovers quietly sharing together in their creative expression of will.

She bowed her head below him, obscuring her face as she nuzzled into his chest with her lacquer-free forehead, sighing as he pulled her closer. “Even if they are rude to us, the elves will have the last laugh tonight.”

Solas frowned slightly as he pulled her back from him, breaking her warm embrace to ascertain her expression. “What do you intend to achieve by favoring Briala in the proceedings tonight, ma vhenan?”

She gazed up at him, surprised by his seriousness, and responded in equal measure. “Briala is the best chance we have of creating a new empire for the elves. The nobles of Orlais will rise in fury if Briala leads the empire directly, an unnecessary hurdle, but with Gaspard as a puppet emperor and Briala pulling the strings, we can perhaps gain land of our own, and enact new laws that protect elves from harm. Laws that give us equal rights as citizens. It’s only right.”

Solas looked at the unfinished wall behind her quietly, smiling slightly as he contemplated her words, still holding her slender figure gently at the waist, voluminous skirts pressing heavily against his entire lower body. Freedom and equality were only right. That was true enough. The world she dreamed of was not so different from his own ideals, a beacon of hope to rise from the ashes of Orlais. And she was already working to create it, in the most cunning way, using her gathered power and influence to weave a web of secrecy that put her impoverished, disenfranchised people ahead of all others.

But… he was for the _elvhen, his_ people, not these children that called themselves elves as they grasped for ancient truths and died before they could know the beauty of true sleep. She in her brightness was so much more, he knew, and he truly loved her for it, but he had a goal to follow, once the catastrophe he had made with his orb was solved.

“Inquisitor? Inquisitor?” came a lilting Antivan accent crescendoing through the main hall, searching for her charge. Sulahn’nehn stepped away and back from Solas’s arms with a wink, and in good time. A knock came on Solas’s door, and another “Inquisitor?” before Josephine entered the room, slightly out of breath.

“Inquisitor, are you ready yet? It is time to go! The carriages are waiting!” The young advisor beckoned to them both to hurry, and they obediently followed her from the room, smiling at each other as she walked impatiently ahead of them.

Their large group stepped outside the castle grounds toward three identical white-and-gold carriages, no doubt sent by the Orlesian empress herself. The men among him were uniformed in the same red suits as himself, while the ladies strapped themselves into red gowns similar in shape but less ornately Elven than Sulahn’nehn’s. Solas felt a tap on his thigh.

“Awful suits, huh? I forgot to get my coat tailored. This is swimming on me!” said Varric, raising his arms to show the excess fabric over his wrists, a welcome compatriot in his misery. 

Cullen soon joined in, to his amusement: “I did the same. This is far too tight for my chest. I can hardly breathe. Maker…” 

The templar sighed as Solas commiserated along with them. “Indeed, I also failed to visit our tailor friend. My coat is a little too large for my frame, although I have managed to compensate, in a way.” 

Varric pointed at Solas’s head and grinned. “Well, at least I don’t have to wear _that_ thing.” The friends laughed together as Vivienne sneered behind them, her own gown perfectly molded to her slim figure, no doubt tailored many times over. 

“I’m on your side,” piped up Sera, looking quite foreign in her voluminous ballgown. “This thing is shite. Fucking heavy skirty shite.”

“Silence, everyone!” called Cassandra from the side of the horsemaster. “We are splitting into groups. Leliana and her spies are already there. Inquisitor, you and your personal guard will take the second carriage. Your armor and weapons have been smuggled into the palace for your use. Your advisors, Varric and I will take the lead, and the rest of your companions the third. Please declare your traveling companions for this journey and any combat to come.”

Sulahn’nehn stepped up beside her as she always did before a long journey, calling out their names like a practiced general selecting soldiers. “Solas. Um… Vivienne, you know a lot about the court, and I guess extra barriers would be nice. Sera, I just really want to see _you_ deal with court, and I like your arrows. We’ll need them. Everyone else, enjoy the ball.” She saluted to her companions as her chosen few stepped towards her and filed into her carriage.

The journey to Halamshiral was arduous, at first. Vivienne and Sera, furious at being forced into such close quarters, began to argue viciously about Orlesian fashion. Sulahn’nehn simply sat quietly by his side. The back of her hand rested inconspicuously against his leg behind her own, fingers gently stroking him, head leaned slightly on his shoulder with her eyes closed while she tried to mentally block out the bickering companions, who finally settled into frigid, uncomfortable silence. As the blessed quiet settled into the rumble of the carriage and steady clop of the horses, Solas found himself drifting to sleep.

He awoke in the same carriage, as he expected. He often found himself waking in the same location in the Fade where he fell into dream, unless he went to sleep with guided purpose. He did not expect Sulahn’nehn to already be there, stretching out on the other side of the carriage as she smiled at him. “Hello, ma vhenan,” she said to him, her laughing lips almost mocking the word he gave her so dearly.

“Hello,” he replied, removing the accursed helmet that still plagued him even in the Fade. He had fallen asleep thinking of how uncomfortable he felt, no doubt. 

“You don’t like the helmet?” asked his heart, her eyes crinkling as she gave a knowing laugh.

“I admit, it is uncomfortable,” sighed the elf, finally loosening his buckle, “as is my suit.” Sulahn’nehn suddenly bit her lip and gave a mischievous grin, leaping to his side of the empty carriage. 

“Then… why not get rid of it?” She left her skirts behind her as she moved, now clad in little but her insufficient yet ornate bodice with nothing to hide her from her belly button on down but her foot wrappings. She must have detached her skirts already. No doubt they weighed on her greatly, even here.

He allowed her to unbutton his scratchy felted coat as he tugged away at his overly large gloves to touch her bare curves, letting out an audible sigh of pleasure as she kissed and licked his smooth, slender chest and neck under his coat, warm fingers running over his nipples. She slid the massive garment from his shoulders easily, now standing to focus on the ties of his pantaloons as he took advantage of her change in position to clasp her sweet face and kiss her hungrily.

She stood him up slightly, crouching in the confines of the carriage, to slide his itchy red pantaloons down, and he kicked them away with disdain, lifting her small, Fade-weightless body into his lap, her graceful legs wrapping around him as he kissed her. She pressed herself hard against him, smiling with every searching kiss, occasionally stopping to scatter kisses around his face, free from the lacquer that masked her natural beauty in the waking world.

He lifted her up again, this time placing her on her back along the seat of the carriage. It was still too short for her petite frame, her legs bending into the wall to compensate, a fact he took swift advantage of as he positioned himself between them and guided himself to enter her.

He loved the way she moaned with melodic abandon when he pleasured her in the Fade, in a way she would never allow herself in the thin walls of Skyhold. Her Veil-green eyes never lost their focus on his own, even as he broke his gaze to admire her young body. He loved the way she grinned as he took her, ever harder, as he growled in passionate fervor.

When they were finished, they laid together naked, whispering to each other as they gently nuzzled and embraced. They were drawing close, and they could both feel the waking call of the solid world. Their sweet time would soon end, though they were still together. She awoke first, shimmering away from his embrace into nothingness in a way that would have broken his heart had he not known she was waiting for him across the Veil.

When he opened his eyes, he noticed the tight pull of the hateful helmet on his head, and the soft warmth of the small hand clasped in his own. Vivienne was half-standing in the window to look out past Sera, who surveyed the scene outside with scornful disinterest. “Good, you’re awake. We are finally here. I hope you two can manage to behave yourselves at court. We don’t want to embarrass the Inquisitor tonight.” said Vivienne imperiously, shooting angry glances at both Sera and Solas. Perhaps Sera deserved the warning, but Solas had seen more of courtly courtesy than the haughty enchantress could dream of.

As they opened the door to their overly ornate carriage, Josephine ran up towards Sulahn’nehn, candle-board in hand. “My lady Inquisitor, before you speak with the court, I must confer with you…”

Sulahn’nehn emerged behind him. “All right, Josephine. You lot go in ahead.”

As Solas stepped towards the gates, he turned to give her a nod. She returned a mischievous smile as Josephine spoke to her obliviously, and a gesture… knocking herself on the head. Solas sighed in exasperation and mild betrayal, and turned back. The elf walked into the gates at the shemlen court of Halamshiral, an honored and invited _guest._

The proceedings went as expected. He was mostly ignored, though his cup was kept far too full, and he found himself forgetting the number of times it had been refilled. Sulahn’nehn, in her grace, amazed the Orlesian nobles with her legends, her bard-trained wit and the foreign beauty of her ballgown and scandalously bare feet. When presented, Solas was introduced as her serving man, of course, although Sera managed to provide her name as a crudely spoken expletive by some marvel of cunning. 

She approached him several times to ask him to dance, and he sorely declined, knowing how it would look to the shemlen court. As his glass continued to refill by the hands of the swift and silent servants of the court as if by magic, his protests grew slower and harder to deliver. She did, however, introduce him to an interesting old friend of hers, the court historian Lady Mantillion, with whom she had once briefly studied and traded tales of elven lore. He found the historian most charming, though her theories of elven mythology were entirely off base, and he managed to offend her severely before the night was through.

The Inquisitor frequently shed her gown in the shadows to don her armor and explore the palace’s depths, and summoned them when she needed backup against the assassin, revealed to be the Empress’s cousin Florianne. A shocking twist. He so loved court intrigue. But as they explored, her plans changed, as she wondered aloud at Briala’s relationship with the Empress and whispered to him of whether _Celene_ could be the puppet ruler she had originally planned.

She danced with the assassin, playing the Game with all the skill of a master the way she had naturally taken to the Fade on her first outing, and she outmatched her fellow bard in cunning before she could attack the shemlen empress. She confidently spoke of the woman’s transgressions, shaming her in front of the entire court, an elf with no compulsion to bow or simper around humans but gave justice where it was due. The court simply loved it.

He was amazed at her audacity, her ability to be accepted by the nobles, leaf-eared and magic-filled as she was. When she returned to address the court after conferring with the empress, _Briala_ was in tow, smiling warmly at her blonde lover. She had achieved her goal without innocent bloodshed, as ruthless as her plans had been. She never failed to surprise him.

As the three powerful women stood together to address the court, the shemlen empress and the two elves who rose so high behind her, Solas felt another surge of misplaced pride. It would not do to be proud of these elves, but he could not help it, not when his vhenan achieved so much.

He searched for her later, when the evening had begun to quiet and those nobles who mulled around to congratulate them all began to disperse. She was on the balcony, her crimson hair shining in the moonlight, sighing into the breeze as she leaned against the bannister.  
“I’m not surprised to find you out here,” he smiled, leaning in next to her. “Thoughts?” 

She sighed, silent for a few moments, eventually looking up at him to reply. “It’s been a very long day.” 

 “For everyone, I’d imagine,” said Solas gently. “It’s nearly over now. Cullen’s giving the army their marching orders as we speak.” A loud burst of applause came from the gathered crowd inside. The band would be back for their encore soon, and then it would end. He had longed to dance with her all night as he grew ever drunker, watching from the sidelines in blossoming jealousy as noble after noble took her graceful hand. He now leaped back from her in excitement, back arching into a graceful bow, hand raised in wait.

“Come. Before the band stops playing, dance with me!” The dirthenera smiled, and took his hand. She would never have turned down a dance. Indeed, it was much of the reason for her exhaustion this evening. 

“I’d love to,” she said, her voice surprisingly shy and girlish at his gesture, given how close they had grown. He drew her into his arms and they swayed to the music together for one last song, eyes locked in affection. As the song came to an end with a flourish, he dipped her low, holding her weight tightly in his arms as he kissed her in the privacy of the balcony. He might lose her later, but he had her now, and these memories would soon be all that was left to him.

Their compatriots were jovial on the way back to camp, victorious, if tired. They filed back into the waiting carriages chattering, even Vivienne remarking on how Sera had impressed a particular noble in one way, but Solas and Sulahn’nehn remained silent, hands brushing softly as they walked side by side.

This time, he was the first to fall asleep, but only by minutes. As she shimmered into being next to him, he pulled her close, curling himself around her as he lifted her gently to recline as one.

“I just feel so exhausted, after tonight, every part of me,” she sighed, pressing into him with her slender back. “Will you just lie here and hold me for a while?”

“Ma nuvenin,” Solas whispered, laying soft kisses on his sweet flame’s head. He would do that. After he took off this helmet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having finished Vir Sulahn'nehn... this is still my favorite chapter in the whole thing, personally. The idea of Solas being grumpy about his clothes and his stupid helmet is just so funny to me. 
> 
> Solas's obsession with clothing fit was totally inspired by my RL boyfriend, who spends so much goddamn time on /r/mfa. The suit fits him fine, he's just picky. Jeez.
> 
> Also, that is the actual game description for the [Helm of the Drasca](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Helm_of_the_Drasca), which is the actual ridiculous hat Solas wears in-game! I bought it and read the item info, and cracked up.


	9. Oh, Grey Warden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas argues with Dorian about spirits on the way to Adamant. After a snide comment by Dorian about elves, Sulahn'nehn shows off a bit.

After her triumph at Halamshiral, the Inquisitor had turned her great unblinking eye to the Wardens, marching through the Western Approach with Solas always close by her side. They discovered Wardens practicing blood magic and binding spirits to their will under the lead of the Venatori that followed Corypheus.

His horror at this finding did not go unnoticed by Sulahn’nehn, who had begun to put new lyrics to an ancient song of sorrow to soothe him as they trod through the barren approach towards the Adamant fortress the Wardens held.

"Oh, Grey Warden, what have you done? The oath you have have taken is all but broken,” Sulahn’nehn sang, hesitantly, unsure of her own words. “All is undone, demons have come, to destroy this peace we have had for so long.”

The tune changed after a quiet moment as she thought, ringing high as she called out to her sleeping god. “Ally or foe? Sylaise only knows. Ally or foe - sweet Sylaise only knows.”

Solas frowned at the mention of the haughty fire goddess he had once loved and now despised, who would likely not have cared enough to know the answer had she even been awake to hear the song. Why did Sulahn’nehn still persist in following Sylaise as a deity when she had long forsaken the pacifism of the Vir Atish’an?

She still acted like a dirthenara on occasion, that was true, likely out of habit, her mage’s focused mind often turning to song rather than fire as the preferred outlet for any strong surge of emotion she experienced, as she did now. Perhaps it was simply how she had been trained to disperse unwelcome surges of magical ability. Solas quietly resolved to train her later in other, more efficient techniques.

He knew, by the bitterness in her voice as she sang, that she truly understood how he felt about the Wardens, her song somehow transcribing his own feelings into soaring sorrow. The Wardens had made so many grave mistakes in their attempt to stop the Blight, and continued to march proudly down their errant path to destroy shining ancient sleeping souls that were not even fully corrupted yet.

That was enough to kindle his howling fury, but now the Wardens were going against their own oaths to use _blood magic_. They enslaved poor unwilling spirits until they corrupted into demons of rage, furious at their own slavery, driven mad, trapped by their emotion as they were pulled from the Veil and forced into the aspect of all that consumed them, all for the sake of _a little more power._

“That’s quite nice, Inquisitor. A word of advice, you might want to change the lyrics to mention the Maker instead of an Elven god, if you intend to have that played in the tavern,” laughed the Tevinter mage, interrupting the elven bard’s expression of song. 

“Excellent point, Dorian,” she laughed in response. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She continued to add verses as they continued, occasionally repeating a verse to reword its lyrics, still calling to Sylaise in their gathered privacy. Listening to her perform as she wrote was interesting to Solas, a rare insight into the quick workings of her creative mind.

She had risen as an equal to her Sylaise, in a land where gods no longer existed. She was the only one that now held a key to divinity, stolen as it was from him, the spark that had somehow held on to her spirit as she fought endlessly against demons and never managed to die.

She had once been a mere priestess at a foreign conclave, one step up from a hearthkeeper, a Dalish elf who, like the rest, held on in mistaken pride to the time-warped secrets her people attempted to conserve, even though she searched for more and accepted new truths. But she had become a warrior, a leader, rising far above her own meager remnants of a culture, alternately treating with nobles, serving justice from her throne, carefully pulling courtly strings to the benefit of her own people, and venturing into the wilderness to seal rifts and slay dragons.

She had lost her old avoidance of the front lines in her handmade masterwork armor, fearless with her spirit sword, now singing as they approached battle to boost their collective mana and stamina much like Varric boosted their focus with his artificer’s tricks.

As they drew toward an unusually low rift, she manipulated the Veil to burst invisibly toward the pride demon that now stalked them, halving herself between mortal form and spirit to become physically invulnerable before she set her mines, using the force of her spectral blade to push the demon toward her expertly cast fiery elven glyphs into inevitable defeat.

He helped her by tearing the Veil slightly enough to pull the straggling terrors that surrounded them together, flailing, in one place, all the better for her to set her formidable fire mines on. With his long-perfected Pull of the Abyss always at her side, she could vanquish armies of demons in seconds, their other companions simply staying out of the way of the fiery blast as their foes disappeared into the pull to face her fury.

She had begun to cycle through the others indeterminately in her travels, simply in an effort to get to know them all better, no longer caring for their usefulness in battle as she could easily have managed on her own, Solas the only supportive constant at her side. This time, Dorian and Iron Bull coughed to the side as the demons cleared, leaving a cloud of thick smoke around Sulahn’nehn in her fire mine’s wake.

His heart tugged with involuntary pride as she skillfully raised her left hand and manipulated his own invented magic to seal yet another rift, her green eyes watching carefully as they always did as she tried to make sense of what the magic in her own hand was doing. As the air cleared and they continued on their journey, Dorian and Bull alternately arguing and flirting as they walked to Sulahn’nehn’s evident amusement, Solas simply thought to himself quietly.

He knew that it was the mark that had kept her alive when she emerged from the Fade, as an entire mountain exploded around her. When she was recovered, her charred body was as lost as the once-alive pillars of coal that scattered the floor of the destroyed Temple of Sacred Ashes, but her marked hand was intact, the flesh still warm and moving as the ancient runes upon it glowed. It was only the intact flesh protected by her mark that enabled him to bring her back into her formidable beauty, all those months ago.

The mark was the only immortal part of her. But in this blighted world, it was the only immortal part of _anyone_ , separated as it was from himself. It granted her some measure of actual divinity, as much as she refused to believe it. She had no need of gods, and yet she somehow held on to the memory of a woman she never knew, who would sooner have bound her great skills, singing endlessly, into a fountain of power for the goddess’s own prideful use.

He wished he had met one like her in his initial travels in the waking world after he woke from uthenera, seemingly the only Dalish elf he ever encountered with the capacity to reason and listen without invoking superstitious beliefs by way of argument.

Perhaps, if she had been a leader long ago, the Dalish would have forgotten less, become less arrogantly needy in their cultural decay. But she was a leader now, and she had the will and passion to regain that glory. Could she play a part in his plans, or was her own ambition to stand in his way, as proud as it made him to witness it?

He loved her too dearly now to truly forsake her. But Fen’Harel had a task, and knew that his people, in the vengeance of their waking, would not enter softly into this blighted world, their empire now lost to them as their formidable magic remained.

If she continued on her path and created an empire for her scattered people, their own gods would take swift advantage of their Dalish devotion, a ready-made slave caste and fledgeling empire for them to take over, an empire that would go against everything he stood for as a person and destroy all he had already fought to achieve.

He could not allow that to happen. She did not have the strength to stand against the might of an entire pantheon. It would be better to dissuade her from forming an empire at all, to let the gods punish the shemlen leaders instead, though he could not truly ever explain why, and though she now had the means to do so at her disposal, Skyhold a shining beacon for the slowly gathering elves.

Her friendship with Briala had blossomed quickly since the ball, the dark-haired elf visiting Skyhold to capture the former bard’s attention as often as Sulahn’nehn now visited Val Royeaux to take tea privately with the fragile empress and her leaf-eared advisor.

Dorian interrupted his thoughts as they traveled by addressing him directly. “Solas. I take it you study spirits?”

“I do,” Solas responded curtly, not looking forward to what the Tevinter mage had to say about spirits, mortalitasi that he was. His ability to raise fallen foes from the dead only proved to be an annoyance to them all, the spirit-animated corpses lumbering after them stupidly long after fights ended.

“Back in my homeland, we keep spirits as servants,” began the loudly dressed mage. 

“So I have been told,” replied Solas drily. 

Dorian continued, oblivious to his ire. “The things they can be made to do is quite marvelous. You should see them.” 

Solas responded coldly, his voice dripping with disdain. “The Tevinter Imperium is not the safest place for elves.”

This statement discomposed the mustached mage, who responded, “Ah, yes,” in an awkward tone before falling silent. Sulahn’nehn broke the frigid silence in time with her warmth, adding another verse and chorus to the song she was working on to distract them from their frustration before falling back into a quiet hum of concentration as she ran out of new lyrics. Dorian soon spoke up again, to Solas’s dismay. Was it too late to turn back to their last camp? He could switch out with one of the rogues to better balance the party, for a time.

“Do you use spirits as servants, Solas? You’d have no trouble capturing them.” Solas could not hide his flash of anger this time at the Tevinter’s audacity. _Capturing_ them? A cruel act worthy of the Tevinter, indeed. 

“No. They are intelligent living creatures. Binding against their will is reprehensible,” he snapped. 

Dorian was unflustered, continuing in wonder. “How much will can they have? They’re amorphous constructs of the Fade.” Solas murmured gruffly in response. They had limitless will, because they _were_ will, made of it, as all things in the Fade were will made manifest.

Dorian rambled on, his tone imperious and matter-of-fact. “There’s no harm in putting them to constructive use. And most mages back home treat them well.” 

Solas could not help but snap at him again, ignoring Sulahn’nehn’s raised eyebrows as righteous anger welled up inside him. “And any that show magical ability are freed, are they not?” Dorian was taken aback by his sarcastic statement. “What? Spirits don’t have magical talent!” His words had gone entirely over his carefully styled head, the idiot.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were talking about your _slaves._ ” spat Solas. Their party had grown increasingly uncomfortable at the intensity of the argument, Iron Bull trailing further and further behind as Sulahn’nehn kept up with them attentively, silent and concerned. They all stayed quiet for a while after that, Sulahn’nehn purposely seeking out areas on their map the commanders had marked for red templars and rifts in order to keep them busy. But there were only so many red templars and demons to vanquish on the road to Adamant, and soon the Tevinter mage piped up again.

“Solas, for what it’s worth, I am sorry. The elven city of Arlathan sounds like a magical place, and for my ancestors to have destroyed it…” Solas was startled by the backhanded near-apology. Dorian had much to apologize for today, but Arlathan was not one of them. When he raised his voice, it was sharp and harsh.

“Dorian! Hush. Empires rise and fall. Arlathan was no more innocent than your own Tevinter, in its time. Your nostalgia for the ancient elves, however romanticized, is pointless. If you wish to make amends for past transgressions, free the slaves of all races who live in Tevinter today.”

He glanced sideways at Sulahn’nehn as he spoke, her words meant as much for her to hear as they were aimed at the Tevinter, for he knew how immeasurably excited she became at the sight of unexplored elven ruins, knew how his own people would sneer at her marked face and dismiss her as a slave if she stood in their way. But she _was _trying to free her people; if anyone could set Tevinter’s slave trade in their unblinking sights, it was the Inquisitor.__

Dorian took the brunt of his statement to heart, however, looking down at the floor in defeat as he spoke. “I… don’t know that I can do that.” 

Fen’Harel smirked, victorious in argument. “Then how sorry are you?” They walked the rest of the way in silence, Dorian falling behind to walk beside the hulking Qunari as Sulahn’nehn stepped gracefully at his own side, occasionally shooting him smiling glances of reassurance and affection.

When they made camp for the evening in the barren waste near a great, dead tree, its lifeless limbs stretching to the sky like a symbol of Mythal, Solas watched Dorian resurrect the skeletal corpse of a crow that had lain nearby, glowing violet as he guided it into the flames. The action magically stoked their camp hearth without need of wood, Sulahn’nehn’s waiting glyphs intensified by the bird’s sacrificed body through the spirit’s intervention. Interesting. He would have expected a lesser mage to use blood magic to attempt the same task.

“I am surprised you do not practice blood magic, Dorian. Is it not popular in Tevinter?” The mage was still sore from their earlier argument, and retorted cattily. 

“While we’re sharing surprises, you’ve done a lot less dancing naked in the moonlight than I’d expected.” Dorian’s statement elicited a loud laugh from Sulahn’nehn as she returned from gathering brushwood, dropping the bundle she carried in surprise as she saw her prepared but unfinished fire had been fed magically. Solas sighed in exasperation at her amusement.

“Tevinter lore about elves remains accurate,” he said snidely. Was he going to have to get used to this irritating mage-child, like he got used to Sera’s pranks? The hulking Qunari’s presence had been bad enough, but he had least enjoyed an excellent game of chess with the surprisingly clever soldier.

Sulahn’nehn had a strange taste in friends. She seemed to enjoy placing him in the company of those that elicited a reaction from him, breaking his careful mask of patience and wisdom to reveal the passion and bitterness within. He rolled his eyes as Dorian tittered, “I wanted to see you make flowers bloom with your song, just once!”

At these words, Sulahn’nehn stopped in her tracks and laughed in a bell-like peal, clapping the young Tevinter on the shoulder. “I think you have the wrong elf there, my friend.” She winked and bent to add handfuls of brushwood to the quickly waning fire, the crow’s corpse now exhausted into ashes.

“What, really? In the moonlight and everything? That sounds quite exciting,” exclaimed Dorian, his tone much friendlier than when he had addressed Solas. 

“Moonlight is optional, as is clothing, but I guess that’s the case with anything in life” giggled the young elf in return. “Want to see?” She grinned mischievously at the entire camp as she walked toward the long-barren tree above them, drained of its life force years ago.

“This is one of the tasks I was trained in as a dirthenera, as a job of sorts, although nobody has _ever_ paid me.” She touched the tree trunk as she called her words out to them, feeling its old wounds. 

“Singing to plants is a job for you elves?” snorted the Tevinter mage, eyebrow raised and voice ever teasing.

Sulahn’nehn walked back towards him, her face now serious. “It is, when entire communities of elves only have one tree to look at in their entire lives, the vhenadahl. The tree of our people, in the centre of every elven alienage,” she said, gently informing him of the culture to which he was foreign, the placid smile on her lips masking the serious implications of her words. When a vhenadahl died, the hope of its sequestered and subjugated people died with it. Her true role was restoring that hope.

“If clothing’s optional, I’m interested,” piped up Iron Bull from the other side of the fire, great horns and bare metallic chest gleaming in the firelight. 

“Don’t get your hopes up, Bull” Sulahn’nehn called back teasingly, sticking out her tongue and grinning as she picked up her staff and walked back toward the tree.

Solas stood and watched quietly, resting one hand on his thoughtful chin as she began to trace a narrow but complex path around the ancient arbor with her toes, in the widest circle the newly built Inquisition camp around the tree would accommodate, carefully stepping as though she were walking on glass.

As a slight runic glow began to appear beneath her feet, Solas realized that her movements indeed carried specific meaning, for she was beating actual runes into the ground with the repeated circular steps of her dance and the force of her descending will, an action he had once seen repeated by a thousand slaves in tandem as they built great palaces with shining runes on every surface to honor their gods.

Her runes in place, Sulahn’nehn began to sing loudly, still circling in frenetic movement, the ancient tree the only audience to which she focused as she began the true ritual. The rune circle was simply a ward, a powerful blanketing barrier of healing magic to surround the tree and guide the process of restoration.

She chose the same ancient melody on which she had meditated throughout the day, embellished as it now was in her fervor, but she sang new lyrics in elven, reminding the the tree of its own past glories while she sang of what she could not know or truly understand, of what her people had lost.

She first cast ice around the tree as she sang, forming great crystals to surround the lower trunk, before raising a wall of fire around her barrier circle, ice melting away into warm water to nourish the tree in its protective shell.

She now cast spirit magic, her sweet voice attracting a small cloud of green wisps around the tree in their infant curiosity. With her staff, she guided them gently down into the trunk of the tree itself, where they evidently ran around in joy, their green glow surging in spots through the branches of the tree that had long forgotten the feeling of life traveling through its densely wooded veins and twisted slowly at their movement. She changed her lyrics to speak of hope, singing to the spirits themselves, offering them a safe new home in which to grow as one.

They responded by coming together as one great limbed being in rejoice, their own still-separate wispy childish voices adding to her melody to create an unearthly echo as the tree began to thrash in awakening. The ancient branches sprouted new limbs of green, and precious buds quickly sprouted and unfurled into great glowing leaves. The spirits willingly gave the tree their lives out of love to inhabit its wooded bounds permanently out of choice, not bound cruelly and temporarily as the Tevinter did to spirits and corpses in battle, but acting of their own will by her divine suggestion.

The Inquisition scouts and soldiers who manned the camp had gathered behind them to watch the spectacle in awe. When he listened to their whispers, he caught mention of Andraste.

Replenished internally, the tree began to seek out its forgotten bounty where it stood, shoots of young plants around its roots, caught in her magic, beginning to grow and blossom into great masses of embrium and prophet’s laurel. Sulahn’nehn did not stop her movements, but broke the focus of her practiced dance to point at the flowers, point at Dorian, and point at the flowers again, grinning as she sang as the Tevinter broke into raucous laughter, flirtatiously slapping the thigh of the Qunari beside him. Finally, the tree coming into peaceful repose with a creak, she ceased her song, stepping back from the densely leaf-emblazoned living tree gracefully as the circle of runes and great green boughs began to ease in their glow.

“Normally, at this point, I’m supposed to sing everyone a speech explaining what I just did, and then everyone in the alienage with problems comes and tells me about them,” she said in a cheerful but forcibly quiet voice, dropping her focus to relax briefly by Solas's side as he raised an arm to quietly touch the small of her back. “But not tonight.” 

Dorian stood dramatically, raising his arms in mock protest while exclaiming, “A speech! A speech!” as Sulahn’nehn chuckled quietly and shook her head, walking swiftly away from them all, out of his arms, to the comfort and privacy of her tent.

That night, he could not find her in the Fade. Her spirit was apparently too drained from her night’s efforts to assemble itself in any viable form, a sore indication that she had gifted some of her own precious life force to this useless tree in her well-preserved ritual. He was a little disappointed by her thoughtlessness; she was worth so much more than this distant arbor that now possessed a small but priceless fragment of her life. She would have lost a part of herself every time she attempted the ritual. He wondered at the mighty wholeness of her spirit as a child, given the bright shining beacon her spirit now presented to his heart. 

He knew she would soon reappear that night, somewhere in the Fade, but gave her time to rest her spirit, returning to one of the forests of his childhood to meditate in solace. It was not the first time he saw her injure her own spirit with her song-magic. The magic's danger was not surprising to him; it was created in his time to boost the power of Sylaise through her Keepers, and their longevity and safety was not required. The goddess had treated her slaves like singing cattle, burning to ash those who stopped singing the moment they defied her eternal order. Surely Sylaise did not care if the powers she granted her priestesses killed them in the process, for she could easily replace them with new ones. 

In an ancient forest, the Dread Wolf spat in scorn at the cruel arrogance of his people, his goals still resting unsteadily in the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts of this chapter eventually lead in to what I do to Dorian in the sequel. I'm sorry, Dorian.


	10. Song of the Fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They enter the Fade at Adamant. After Sulahn'nehn sides with the Wardens, Solas is extremely grumpy. Fade sex ensues. NSFW chapter!

“We… we were falling.” said Hawke, hovering upside-down from a precipice above Solas, her bright blue eyes squinting in confusion. “Is this… are we dead?

“No,” said Solas, looking up at the great breach in the sky from which they had entered this place. “This is the Fade.” It had been thousands of years since he had first set foot in this strange world as a dreaming boy, and he had never been to this part of it. He had certainly never wished to enter it physically, its transient beauty dispelled by the constraints of reality. The siege of Adamant had been difficult, and costly, but it would have cost them all their lives had Sulahn’nehn not used her power to save them when Corypheus’s dragon appeared.

“The Inquisitor opened a rift. We came through… and survived,” he continued, for the mystified benefit of Hawke, Stroud and Bull, though Dorian seemed comfortable enough. “I never thought I would ever find myself here physically…” His voice trailed off as he surveyed his surroundings in wonder. The landscape around him now was most uninviting, gloomy and desolate, slick rocks glimmering green in the light of the rift above him. A familiar shape in the sky made his heart leap with longing.

“Look. The black city. Almost close enough to touch.” Arlathan. Not Arlathan itself; he had not been fool enough to hide something so precious in open view. He had hidden Arlathan and its citizens within a great eluvian of his own design, so great its manipulation drained him of all power in the attempt. Its shadowed reflection, echoes of its majesty, now lay dormant in the sky of the Fade above them.

It was always visible now, in the Fade, after he hid it away from the waking world seemingly a few years ago, but here it was _palpable_ , an aching reminder of his goals. He wanted to run from their group, to explore this corrupted world, to climb the great spires to reach the shadow of the city that weighed down his heart. But he could do little to free this trapped city until he aided Sulahn’nehn in destroying Corypheus.

“This must be very exciting for you, Solas,” came her warm voice from his side, stirring him from his yearnings. “Any advice you have on what exactly is going on would be wonderful.”

“The first time I entered the Fade, it looked like a lovely castle filled with gold and silks,” piped up Dorian before Solas could respond. “I met a marvelous desire demon, as I recall. We chatted and ate grapes before he attempted to possess me.” He chuckled and smiled up at Iron Bull who still hovered inverted above them as he spoke. “Perhaps the difference is that we are here physically. This is no one’s dream.”

“It’s not how I remember it either” said Hawke, now righted in her orientation, walking toward the Inquisitor at Solas’s side. “The stories say you walked out of the fade at Haven. Was it like this?” Sulahn’nehn shrugged in evident frustration. “I don’t know. I still can’t remember what happened the last time I did this.”

“Well, whatever happened at Haven, we can’t assume we’re safe now,” replied the older mage. “That huge demon was right on the other side of that rift Erimond was using, and there could be others.”  
“In our world, the rift the demons came through was nearby. In the main hall. Can we escape the same way?” asked the warden Stroud from behind them.

Sulahn’nehn walked past him, her eyes focused on the rift’s breach. “It beats waiting around for demons to find us, right?” She pointed to a crest in the landscape ahead of them. “There, let’s go.” They began to tread carefully as a group through this unwelcome land, the first mortals to travel to this world in thousands of years.

“This is fascinating. It is not the area I would have chosen, of course. But to physically walk within the fade…” Solas sighed in happiness. The Fade always felt so different from the mortal world- brighter, more luminous, filled with magic and potential for more, and this corrupted land was no different from the dream-worlds he loved to explore, filled as it was with magic that evoked fear and terrible awe. He had never thought to find himself here, but now that he was, he longed to know every inch of it.

“I don’t suppose you have any words of wisdom for this part of the Fade?” asked Sulahn’nehn, looking around her in childlike confusion. “Why would I ever have voluntarily come to _this_ part of the Fade?” replied Solas, sarcasm rising as quickly as it fell in his gentle voice. “The demon that controls this area is extremely powerful. Some variety of fear, I would guess. I suggest you remain wary of its manipulations and prepare for what is certain to be a fascinating experience.”

They were beginning to approach some semblance of ordered landscape, an area the demon had surely filled with terrifying foes, tailored to each of their minds. He wondered what the demon had prepared for him. His own fears were… complex.

“Dirth ma, harellan. Ma banal enasalin. Ma solas ena mar din.” They had fought their own fears to recover the Inquisitor’s memories, aided by a mysterious but benevolent spirit who took the form of the sacrificed Divine, and now the demon that controlled their surroundings mocked him directly. Solas was not troubled by the demon’s words as he sent fists of stone at the mocking effigies of his fallen friends. He wore his fears as armor, after all, and the demon could not mock his shameful pride when he now took it as a name. The friends that haunted him now were always in his mind.

Sulahn’nehn, however, was ever inquisitive, her long ears perking at the elvhen words surrounding them as she frowned. “What does he mean, Solas? Why is he calling you a traitor?” she whispered to him as her spirit sword vanquished the sorrowful form of Ghilan’nain. He ignored her for now, mentally noting to teach her the word’s proper etymology as he froze Elgar’nan in front of him, raising his voice to quell the demon. “Banal nadas,” he shouted dismissively as the air around them began to clear.

The demon continued to taunt them all as they fought a path toward it, revealing itself as the Aspect of Nightmare that allied to give Corypheus his power over demons. They soon reached the rift in the demon’s lair, guarded over by a massive, naked, many-limbed Andruil who squatted over the den, her privates fully visible in stinking glory, eight sets of bosoms heaving as she panted and drooled. Solas was truly revulsed by the corrupted sight of the goddess he once had to spurn so severely, shuddering as unpleasant memories of her insistent, violent attempts at seduction overwhelmed him.

The Aspect of the Nightmare hovered under her, in Mythal’s finery, cackling. The golden glow of the spirit distracted the monstrous guard long enough for them to fight its master, and Sulahn’nehn was swift in her justice, setting her mines and spiriting toward the demon with her sword raised before Solas was done setting his barriers on them all.

They quickly bore down its strong barriers as a group, Sulahn’nehn staying close to the demon with a barrage of fire and gleaming sword strikes while the others attended to the straggling fears it summoned. Before long, the demon ruler of this world lay in ashes at Sulahn’nehn’s feet as she bent to examine if any precious loot remained. Exhausted from the battle, their group began to tread toward the rift.

As they came near, however, the grotesquely perverted form of Andruil stalked toward them, her giant feet almost crushing sweet Sulahn’nehn as she scrambled toward the rift and beckoned to the others to hurry. “We need to clear a path!” shouted the Warden, as Hawke ran towards them all. “Go! I’ll cover you.” The others stopped in shock at the Champion of Kirkwall’s words as the Warden spoke in reproach. “No. You were right. The Grey Wardens caused this. A Warden must-“

Hawke interjected, eyes flashing in fury. “A Warden must rebuild. That’s _your_ job. Corypheus is mine.” She glared at Sulahn’nehn, willing her to allow this last burst of heroism. But the small elf shook her head, in her wisdom. “Stroud…” she whispered, looking directly at the Warden before looking away in shame as the soldier saluted her. “Inquisitor. It has been an honor,” said Stroud, stalking towards the giant drooling goddess. “For the Wardens!” he shouted, sword cutting at Andruil’s ankle as she emitted a monstrous screech.

Solas jumped into the rift before either foe drew their last breath. He hoped the Warden would survive, but the monster made of Andruil had drawn her massive bow as they departed, and it would not have been long.

Sulahn’nehn was the last to enter the chamber back in Adamant, the Wardens and their chained demons standing shocked at their return. She simply glared at them as she closed the rift behind her, causing the demons and their Wardens to fall to the floor incapacitated. The Inquisition soldiers, exhausted from their long siege, cheered in in joyful relief.

The red-haired elf and brunette mage discussed their situation while scouts and Wardens provided updates on the siege. An awkward silence filled the room as a Warden knight asked where Stroud had gone. Sulahn’nehn bit her lip and looked at Solas, shrinking back before she stood determined to address the gathering Wardens.

“Warden Stroud died striking a blow against a servant of the Blight. We will honor his sacrifice, and remember how he exemplified the ideals of the Grey Wardens,” she said loudly, her Dalish accent lilting. “Even as Corypheus and his servants tried to destroy you all from within.”

The Warden knight approached her in desperation. “Inquisitor, we have no one left of any significant rank. What do we do now?”

She stood and debated for the briefest moment before calling to Solas’s great disappointment, “You stay and do whatever you can do to help. Stroud died for the ideals of the Wardens. In war, victory. And we are still at war.” He had known her to show wisdom, but this was folly. She acknowledged his scowl as she continued. “You are still vulnerable to Corypheus, and possibly his Venatori, but there are plenty of demons that need killing.”

And plenty of spirits yet to be bound into demons to kill, no doubt. He trusted her, but not these Wardens, and did not trust what they would bring to the Inquisition in their desperation. They had proven themselves useless, corruptible, soldiers marching to a futile goal. She should have exiled their misguided order, not welcomed them into her ranks.

They traveled back to Skyhold by carriage after the Inquisitor dispensed orders to Cullen, their path now secured by Inquisition scouts. The Qunari barely fit inside the dark leather-lined space, but the petite elf did not need the leg room, and sat nimbly opposite him, barely taking up space herself as the lumbering Qunari squirmed uncomfortably beside Dorian.

Solas took Sulahn’nehn’s side as always, but was incensed with disappointment after her decision at Adamant, and soon broke the relative silence of their journey with a rant. “I cannot believe the Grey Wardens could even conceive of such a plan. To seek out these Old Gods deliberately in some bizarre attempt to preempt the Blight…”

“And calling the army of demons. That’s my favorite part,” replied Sulahn’nehn, laughingly. She disapproved in her words, and yet in her actions had condoned the order’s every misguided move.

“The demons are nothing. They’re a tool,” said Solas dismissively, still disappointed in his vhenan’s choice. “A tool that would have let Corypheus ride roughshod over most of Orlais,” she reminded him quickly, a sharp note rising in her warm, mellow voice. “Even if they hadn’t, the entire idea is wrong. The blight is not something one smugly outsmarts,” he snapped.

He sighed. He had not meant to argue with his heart. He glanced at Dorian in front of him, who openly smirked as he watched the Inquisitor quarrel with her lover.

“Forgive me,” he said gently. “The entire idea is… unnerving.” She smiled back at him and patted his hand, finally resting her small hand on his own, her warmth soothing his cold rage.

Perhaps, under her leadership, the Warden order would come to dissolve, like the Templars had. She was right in their usefulness in such a dire time, as reprehensible as their methods were.

Solas fell silent as the carriage rumbled along. Dorian and Bull were quietly discussing the strangeness of their experience in the Fade. Sulahn’nehn was already asleep, leaning against him so heavily he eventually took her in his arms and leaned her down into his lap, caressing her soft red shock of hair as he quietly drifted into dreams.

Sulahn’nehn was waiting for him eagerly when he opened his eyes again to the dark confines of the same carriage’s counterpart in the Fade. “Aneth ara, ma lath. Can I show you something?” she whispered in excitement, taking his cold hands and filling them with warmth as their tight quarters expanded and surged with light, guiding him to the part of the Fade where her mind now reposed.

They were in the Emprise du Lion, by the frozen Crystal Cascade, but it was different. The usual frigid whiteness blanketing the once-sacred land had been replaced with fields of fresh green dotted with new flowers, the smooth walkable surface of the lake transformed into a glittering pool. The always-frozen falls cascaded down beside them grandly in sheer veils that reflected rainbows of light.

Sulahn’nehn clasped his hand and smiled broadly as they walked, so happy in the environment she had created. “I finished this place recently, I couldn’t wait to show it to you. I took my memories of the Emprise, and melted everything into summer. I imagine it looked like this once. That waterfall can’t always have been frozen.”

This time, he wondered if their surroundings were truly dark rock and green light, their perspective of the raw Fade magically warped in their dreaming approach. He had always known the Fade to be a real place, but took no pleasure in its reality, preferring his own controlled meanderings. In the Fade, as a Dreamer, he was still a god. He could still create from nothing out of the force of his own will, a process he always took pride in. He was glad his vhenan had picked up the principles so quickly, after he showed her his own curated memories and demonstrated how to modify them. This land was quite a marvel, for a beginner, its minute details provided by her exceptional visual memory.

They stood on the ornate elven bridge by the ancient waterfall, embracing. “I find it peaceful here, soothing. I thought you might enjoy it after… Adamant.” He smiled sorrowfully as he gazed down at her, a finger tracing the scarlet marks on her cheekbone down to her chin, raising her delicate jaw to kiss her deeply. She flung her arms around him to kiss him back, crushing his arms in the force of her affection, and after a moment, he pressed her a few inches away, his voice grave. “I apologize for my earlier words, vhenan. My anger was misplaced. It is the Wardens that trouble me, not you. Though I wonder how much free reign you will give them under your leadership.”

She ran her hand down his chest reassuringly, a new maturity rising in her voice as she spoke. “I certainly don’t think what they’re doing is right, not after what you’ve told me. But they’re the only ones who can stop the Blight for now, and more importantly, they’re the only ones who want to. I can’t just exile them and leave Orlais undefended. The Blight will still be a threat when Corypheus is gone. Maybe I can force them to find other ways to stop the Blight, so they can still fight for their order without killing the old gods.”

Solas nodded, his eyes focused on the glimmering falls beside them as he thought. She had the influence to change the Warden’s entire focus, that was true. But there _was_ no way to stop the Blight, as far as he knew, and the Blight had already threatened his own civilization once.

He closed his eyes in distracted pleasure as she began to massage his sore neck, drawing herself in closer to better her reach. He had not realized how tense he had grown, but she seemed to have noticed. His hands drifted to the curves of her rear as her slender fingers worked against his shoulders, kissing his neck and sucking on his drooping ears to his muffled groans.

He began to tug at her fine armor impatiently as he kissed her, loosening its straps and letting it tumble into the water beside them to Sulahn’nehn’s great amusement. She responded by lifting and tossing his ancient keeper’s robe far into the lake beyond with a giggle, respectfully leaving his necklace untouched, though she still had yet to mention it. Before long, they were both naked, worldly cares temporarily forgotten as they caressed each other in private abandon. She broke away from him, to his dismay, a shock of cold kissing him in her wake.

She picked up her staff and turned to the waterfall with a mischievous grin, casting a great wall of fire at its apex as steam began to rise from the falling water. She hopped from the bridge gracefully into the lake, splashing playfully, and beckoned to him, winking. “Come here, ma lath. It’s so warm.” He dived in after her, the heated water soothing his battle-weary muscles. She pulled him towards her, backing into the waterfall, positioning her own back under the cascade for a few moments as she steeled herself against the thunder of the water with a relaxed sigh.

“It’s too bad this isn’t real. I could use a hot bath after that battle,” she laughed, as Solas picked up her slender frame and pressed her against the rock behind the falls, her legs tightly clasped around him, a barrier around his head helping them both to breathe as they kissed fervently under the thundering water.

As he entered her, she gave a great moan, her arms extending to the air, the force of her ecstatic will traveling up her fingers to create glowing handholds in the rock above her to steady herself in his arms. He grinned at her involuntary expression of magic as he rocked against her, grunting gently as he kissed and bit her neck and ears.

She eventually loosened her grip from her magical holds to grasp him tightly as she reeled back against him. Solas grew unsteady in his passion, and eventually placed her back into the water, turning her swiftly to press her breasts against the smooth wall of rock as the pressure and heat of the waterfall continued to soothe them both. He entered her again from behind as she tilted her hips earnestly toward him, standing on tiptoe and gazing back at him lustfully.

He allowed himself to finish inside her carelessly. The Fade offered respite from the trappings of the mortal world, and he did not worry here about the consequences of their trysts. She released herself from his grip and turned to face him, smiling as she caressed his shoulders.

As he bent to kiss her again, he felt a lurch, and she shimmered wide-eyed out of his grasp before his lips could connect. They must have arrived.

His eyes opened to the dim light of the confined carriage as Dorian’s embarrassed face came into view. Though still clothed, he was… oddly tied. Iron Bull simply smirked with his arms crossed and harness mysteriously missing as Sulahn’nehn laughed raucously. The carriage had drawn to a stop; Solas could see Skyhold from the small window in the door.

“Inquisitor, I am… so sorry… I did not expect… I hope you do not…” stammered the Tevinter mage, blushing as he avoided everyone’s gaze. “Oh, you have _no_ idea,” laughed Sulahn’nehn, grinning at Solas as she spoke. A knock came on the carriage door, Leliana’s solemn face greeting them as she requested to speak with the Inquisitor alone. They filed out of the carriage awkwardly, Dorian finally unbuckled. Solas suspected the Tevinter mage already possessed great knowledge of his friend’s secret trysts in the Fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dorian/Bull is my OTP.


	11. Song of Mien'Harel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas and Lavellan fight a dragon together. Afterwards, they meet an adorable, mysterious fennec...

They grew ever closer to defeating Corypheus after the Grey Wardens folded into the Inquisitor’s reach. Sulahn’nehn had become a force of nature in her power, basking in it, declaring to her companions that the dragons that stalked Orlais had to be dealt with as swiftly as the rifts. Sera and Iron Bull were ever eager to join her in facing the formidable creatures, and Solas never left her side. Her companions often found themselves downed against the might of the dragons, awakening groggily as a group to her proud grin as her invulnerable fade cloak faded away and the dragon lay in skeletal remains at their feet.

One by one, they staked out and battled the creatures. Now, only one remained, save for Corypheus’s minion. Solas never took pride in killing the majestic beasts; he knew the Tevinter were right to revere them. Dragons were pure magic made form, unreasonable forces of will that overpowered almost all in their wake. His own people had bound their spirits to dragons once, giving control and reason to the great creatures in exchange for their limitless elemental power.

Early one morning, Sulahn’nehn jumped forcefully onto Solas’s desk as he studied, knocking the table over entirely and scattering its contents at her feet as she laughed heartily. Solas silently stared at her from his chair, peeved but secretly amused. “Bullseye!” crowed the leader of nations as she bowed her head, smirking in half-hearted apology, and magically raised his table and its contents to their rightful place in one swift motion.

“Would you like to come dragon hunting with me, ma lath?” she smiled brightly. Solas raised an eyebrow. The sun had barely begun to rise. Iron Bull and Sera would surely be recovering from their night in the tavern.

“I am ready at your call, vhenan, but surely our fellow dragon hunters need time to rest? I understand there was another game of Wicked Grace in the tavern last night.” She grinned and sat on the corner of his desk, shaking her head at the memory of the previous night. “Yes, most of us were there. I missed you. I lost a big bet to Josephine early on. Probably a good thing, since I went to bed early in a huff.”

She smiled at him, tracing his leg with her bare toes as he leaned into his chair. “I had a different idea for today, though,” she whispered in a seductive tone.

“Oh?” Solas was curious. He half hoped this would not involve some sort of macabre sexual ritual. He had only succumbed to her direct seductions once thus far, preferring to meet her in the Fade where there were fewer consequences.

“I’ve noticed that when we fight dragons, I seem to do all of the work, as far as dealing damage” she said to him wryly, bashful in the arrogance of her words. “I want to try to defeat the Highland Ravager with just you at my side. If you focus on barriers and Pull of the Abyss, I can keep its attention off you, and you can make me stronger.”

“A wise strategy, vhenan. Ma nuvenin,” smiled Solas in response, moving obediently to his cabinet to retrieve his armor. He felt a warm pressure at his back as the Inquisitor embraced him from behind, taking his lovingly gifted obsidian-laced battlemage armor from his hands and slipping it over his head, kissing his ears.

He turned to her smiling as he tightened the straps, lifting her chin to kiss her softly before turning back to his cabinet to retrieve the staff she had crafted for him. “I am ready, if you are.” She nodded and walked toward the hallway. “I’ll ask Dennet to get the carriage ready. I’d rather take my hart, but the Emprise is too far.”

As they traveled, the strong light streaming in through the small window in the carriage, Sulahn’nehn busied herself with a ceremonial baby’s blanket she chose to knit from hand-spun elfroot for her chambermaid, Merana, who grew enormously pregnant with each passing day. Sulahn’nehn was fond of the redheaded elf, and had once confided in Solas that she suspected the birth would be difficult and dangerous for the mother, as the child would likely have horns.

In her focused attention, she grew quiet, and Solas grew bored. “Ma vhenan. There is a place in the Fade where spirits gathered in sorrow at the passing of a great dragon. I would like to-“  
“Not _now,_ Solas,” she muttered impatiently, her sylvanwood needles caught in a knot. Solas bristled in offense at her rude interjection, and stared ahead in silence.

“I’m sorry, Solas. I just woke up, and I’m busy working on something. I would love to see the place you speak of, another time,” came her soothing voice as she put down her work to touch his thigh. Solas looked out of the window. “You could always work on your craft in the Fade. You would find your own skills can improve exponentially there.”

“And spend hours working only to find nothing had actually been achieved when I awoke?” Sulahn’nehn replied curtly. The silence in the carriage grew tense. She sighed. “Again, I’m sorry. I’m taking out my frustration at this stupid thing on you. I’m too awake to go back to sleep now, ma lath. You can go to the Fade if you’d like. I’ll watch over you.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead, quickly returning her attention to her work as Solas quietly sighed and leaned his head against the carriage wall, closing his eyes.

The empty carriage quickly shifted into a great, misty temple as he opened his eyes and guided his will to the right memory.

He stood in Mythal’s great sanctum at the eve of her murder. Thousands of elves filled the hall in quiet sorrow, their faces marked as one with great leafless trees. Their silent tears wet the floors of the sanctum, creating flowing streams down the temple’s tiled floors that led to the Well of Sorrows.

This was not his memory. He could not have been here when it happened. Mythal’s murderer had not been found, and he was still under Elgar’nan’s vengeful suspicion. But here in the Fade he was a shadow walking through flickering images of memory, leaving no trace of his passing unless he wished it.

As Solas stood, observing their funerary rituals, he was moved to weep with them for the loss of his dear old friend. For the loss of his people. As dear as the Inquisitor had become to him, he could not replace the aching cavity in his heart for his entire civilization. She was not truly one of his people, not even in her glory, because the world had changed. He could not fight the passing of time without destroying the structure of the mortal world itself.

He observed more sadly still as Andruil’s blighted servants breached the Sanctum yet again, slaughtering Mythal’s unarmed worshippers by the hundreds as the sorrowful silence was broken by screams. While her personal guard remained valiant, the younger priests and priestesses succumbed to fear, sacrificing their spirits to the Well of Sorrows before the opposing goddess could reach them.

He had watched this tragic play so many times before, ever observing, never permitted to act. This was one of the many events that led to the fall of Arlathan that he could not change. As he sadly watched Mythal’s champion, who on that eve named himself Abelas, dart around like a wisp through the Fade to protect his comrades, holding an ornate greatsword made of light itself as he shielded himself in the Veil, Solas felt a familiar pull in his stomach that called him to the waking world.

“We’re here, ma lath! Wear your furs, it’s freezing,” said Sulahn’nehn, kissing him as he awoke. Her ornate elfroot blanket was already finished and folded above her pack.

They trod together closely through the long bridge lined with garish Orlesian statues towards the Pools of the Sun, beyond which the Highland Ravager lay. As they walked, she sang to him, a song of courage to steel his reluctant spirit, but fell quiet when the creaking hiss of the dragon reached their ears. She raised a hand to her lips and tiptoed to the opening of its lair, peering inside.

“I think it’s asleep,” she whispered to him. She peered back into the clearing at the great scaled beast that reposed in the middle of the ancient coliseum where slaves once competed for the favors of gods.  
“I almost feel bad about this.” She looked back at him, her eyebrow twitching. “…Almost.”

She began to walk into the clearing without fear, turning her head to mutter a staccato “barriers! Pull!” in a quick reminder as she set a fire mine underneath the sleeping dragon and awaited its awakening blast.

She was seemingly right about her ability to defeat the great dragon alone. As he obediently maintained her quickly exploding barriers alongside his own, ever increasing her power as the ambient magic around her surged, she focused her spirit sword on the creature’s back legs, deftly fade-stepping back into close quarters when their powerful foe tried to back away to blast her with fire. She repeatedly cloaked herself in the veil, staying close to the dragon to catch it in the force of her return.

When the Highland Ravager summoned its dragonlings, Solas cast his veil-tears quickly, the two powerful mages working in quick synergy as Sulahn’nehn placed her fire mines as soon as the force of his Pull took hold on the small struggling beasts. As she assailed the beast, her barrier replenished itself, leaving Solas free to focus on his own defense. As soon as they reached the trap, the mine exploded in a cloud of limbs, and they both refocused their efforts to the great dragon, now limping in pain, its right leg nearly severed by the radiant elf’s spirit blade.

Solas found himself prostrated inadvertently at the power of the creature more than once, as it flapped its wings in fury at Sulahn’nehn’s swiping, creating a vortex that she glanced off with a shimmer, which sent him colliding to the floor with a groan even as the dragon ignored him. The great beast’s howls of pain grew more frequent as its legs gave way, bringing waves of baby dragons for Solas to attend to as Sulahn’nehn continued her relentless assault.

The dragon peppered the arena with fire mines of its own, which Solas had to dodge, but Sulahn’nehn stepped right over them, ignoring them entirely in her enansal-granted resistance to fire. She had spent months collecting shards in reverence for the Temple of Solasan, scrambling in frustration to reach their impossible heights. She profited from its ancient blessings, gasping with new power each time they cleared a room as it granted her fire resistance in her chosen reverence to Sylaise. Now, she was completely immune to fire’s fury, stepping through the dragon’s flames with a smirk as she raised the hilt of her sword to extend its blade with light.

And, suddenly, it was over, the great beast giving one last howl before sinking lifeless into the floor of the ruined arena. Solas leaned on his staff, surveying the great creature they had felled, exhausted from the effort.

Sulahn’nehn was sprightly, somehow, darting around the remains of the dragon and stuffing its priceless treasures into her pack. She laughed gaily as she held a garishly tufted Orlesian helm in her hands. “What a silly helmet! Here, Solas, you should wear this. It has excellent statistics,” she said winking as Solas sighed and allowed her to dart to him and place the hideously plumed Duke’s Mane over his head to cover his face with a childish giggle. Why did she take such pleasure in plaguing him with terrible headwear?

She covered her mouth as she looked at him, her green eyes gleaming in wicked amusement, finally removing it again with a laugh-stifled “No, you’re too pretty” to kiss him passionately on the lips, reckless in the midst of the two generations of great dragons that lay lifeless around them. Solas stepped back from her, his face serious. “Not here, not after what we’ve done. These are great creatures.”

“Great creatures that no longer terrorize the people of Orlais,” she retorted, her smile twitching. “This is a time for celebration, ma lath, don’t be so grim. We did it! We killed the last dragon! _And_ we did it without anyone else!” Solas simply shook his head and forced a smile as she danced in jubilant excitement at her personal achievement, holding the helmet aloft.

She stopped to stuff the helmet into her bulging pack, lifting its weight with a sigh as she began to collect silverite from the clearing and put it in her pockets. Solas waited at the arena’s exit patiently, turning his head at the sound of a soft chatter behind him.

A small white fennec had come to sit outside the clearing, clearly in view of the dragon fight. How long had it been there? Had it observed the entire battle? It seemed unusually intelligent for a fennec, its bright blue eyes gleaming unnaturally as it tilted its head to look at him. It padded closer to him, unafraid, staring at him almost in recognition. Was it, perhaps, a spirit in fennec form, much like Cole?

“I found fade-touched silverite! Creators, this is better than the obsidian masterwork I found in Redcliffe!” she shouted to him excitedly as she leaped gaily back over to his side. She stopped to see what Solas focused his attentions on, and gasped in joy at the sight of the fennec.

“You are the cutest fennec I have ever seen,” she cooed, bending with an arm extended to greet the strange creature as Solas simply observed her with a frown. The fennec gave another chatter, trotting happily towards her and nuzzling her marked hand with its forehead. It allowed her to pick it up, its friendly behavior unheard of for a wild fennec. They were skittish and fearful in their very nature, docile and powerless as they were. But this fennec cuddled into Sulahn’nehn’s arms like a kitten, chattering as she giggled and petted its long white fur.

“You are so sweet. Can I keep you? Will you stay?” she asked the fennec in a voice she reserved for the youngest babies in Skyhold. The fennec seemed to understand her, licking her nose and nuzzling her face in response.

“It may not be wise, vhenan. This creature appears to be more than a mere fennec,” warned Solas, sighing as he already knew his words would go unheeded. Sulahn’nehn adored fennecs, and frequently broke away from their questing travels in distracted joy as she attempted to chase down the skittish creatures and pet them, almost always unsuccessfully unless it was injured.  
“It is supernaturally adorable, isn’t it?” grinned the young elf, holding the small fox close to her. She looked down at it in concentration. “I think I’m going to call you Mien’Harel.”

Solas raised his eyebrows in surprise at the name. “May I inquire as to why, ma vhenan?”

“Well, it’s a city elf term for a minor elven rebellion, a rebellion of many blades. It’s a reminder that humans should be wary of how they treat elves, because many little daggers can still cut them like a mighty sword. Even a short blade should be respected.”

“But why name your pet such a thing?” pressed Solas, interested in her choice of words.

“I’m trying to lead an elven rebellion. I want this sweet baby by my side while I do it. And symbolically, I’ve always thought of fennecs as little baby wolves. A mien’harel is a little rebellion, like a fennec is to a great wolf such as Fen’Harel.”

She stopped for a moment, still petting the content creature now napping in her arms, continuing bashfully. “And… I kind of want to pay tribute to Fen’Harel, if I may be honest. I’m growing apart from Sylaise and her ways, and I’m starting to identify with the old wolf a lot more…”

Solas was shocked by her admission, smiling broadly at her words. She had no idea to whom she spoke… old wolf that he was indeed. He knew of her struggles with the Vir Atish’an, but she had never confided this to him before. Was she beginning to consider herself _his_ follower, Dalish as she was? He had not heard a positive prayer in his name in centuries.

“Fen’Harel? I understand the Dalish do not usually choose to follow the Dread Wolf” asked Solas casually, trying to hide his excitement at the topic of discussion.

“You helped me change my mind,” she admitted. “They hate him for sealing away the gods, but you say the gods were slavers, that people were forced to follow them for centuries. I’ve had nightmares about being forced to sing non-stop for years. If that’s true, then the elves who were slaves led terrible lives. I think he was trying to help them, in his own way, by sealing the gods away from the world, even if he ruined everything in the process. To free the people. To make their lives better. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s why I want to follow him.”

Solas was rendered speechless at her words, not realizing how far and how well she would read into the glimpses of the past he had allowed himself to show her, trying in all his might to remove his presence from his tales. He had not expected her, in all her empathy, to place herself so readily in the minds of the ancient priestesses, pondering fully the implications of their lifestyle in dread. Perhaps that is what had led her so far from the path of peace.

“You continue to surprise me, ma vhenan,” he said softly, after a moment. “I feel the same way about the events that transpired, from what I have witnessed in the Fade.”

She smiled back at him as she walked over, still holding the sleeping fennec, to kiss his cheek fondly. The fennec’s surprising warmth and soft fur pressed into his arm as she leaned into him. He put an arm around her, holding his heart and her new pet in a loving embrace.

She meant so much to him now, all the more for her empathic understanding of his true self, though he could not bring himself to admit his nature to her yet. He was so close, but he held back his betraying words. More than anything, now, he felt relief, a hope that she would not reject him if he did reveal himself. But he could not, not yet, not until they were about to retrieve his orb. When he came into his power again, she would fully understand.

She stepped away from him, frigid air replacing her warmth as she pointed at the setting sun. “We should get back home before it gets dark, ma lath. Let’s go.”

As they returned to Skyhold in their carriage, the fully rested fennec kept them both awake with its antics, frustrating Solas in his desire to return to the Fade. It refused to stay put, distressed by the confines of the carriage, jumping over their laps in a continuous circuit to Sulahn’nehn’s bubbly giggles. She began to sing to it, a lilting tavern song reminiscent of the one she wrote for Sera, lifting its paws in an attempt to teach it to dance.

The intelligent creature followed her cues, remaining upright and stepping where it guided her. She gasped in joy at its movements, looking at Solas in amazement. “This is amazing. I love this fennec. I can’t wait to show this to everyone in Skyhold.”

Solas simply sighed and shook his head. No fennec that he knew of had ever been able to dance.


	12. Song to Mythal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor tackles the Temple of Mythal. From Solas's perspective, we see glimpses of what once happened there.

Mien’Harel only added to Sulahn’nehn’s popularity in Skyhold. The strange creature followed her everywhere, close at her heel, more mabari than fennec. She often stopped in the halls to allow others to pet the furry, friendly beast, smiling proudly as noble visitors and serving girls alike cooed over its beauty.

Solas did not mind the creature, which clearly exhibited friendliness and affection to all, but he was wary of its true nature. It was not wise for the Inquisitor to bring a strange spirit so close to her, when they were so near their goal. It had even begun to sleep in her bed, as Sulahn’nehn admitted when she would join him in the Fade for their nightly journeys.

Sulahn’nehn allowed it to accompany her on their travels when they ventured to the Arbor Wilds to find the lost Temple of Mythal, to Solas’s dismay. It did not engage in combat like wild fennecs often did, the weak beasts caught snapping into the fray and quickly downed on the sidelines before anyone noticed them.

As they traveled through the Arbor Wilds, the mysterious fennec blatantly used _magic_ , an approximation of Sulahn’nehn’s fade-cloak of invulnerability that, instead of lasting for the few seconds she was able to manage, lasted for the entire battle, enabling it to simply sit patiently with its head tilted as enemies ran straight through it to reach its chosen master.

Sulahn’nehn was not blind to the impossibility of her pet’s power. After its first display of magical ability, unheard of for any wild beast, she crouched down by it, stroking it as she frowned.

“I wonder what you are?” she said softly, examining its shining blue eyes. Sera piped up in horrified confusion. “Shite! I thought that thing was well cute, and now it’s using some bloody magic bullshit? That is not cute. Any more. That is _weird._ ”

“I suspect it is a spirit, much like our friend Cole,” said Solas calmly. The fennec had been in their company for a week, and displayed extraordinary feats on a daily basis. For anyone to not notice its strangeness would be greatly ignorant. He had expected as much from Sera, but surely his vhenan had already seen it?

“No… Not a spirit. They’re too bright. Bright bursts gleaming two by two by two, a great sword in the sky, shining suns spying in the form she loves most,” came Cole’s disjointed voice beside them as they all looked at the spirit boy in varying levels of confusion. “I’m not even going to try to pretend I understood that one,” said Sulahn’nehn, laughing with both eyebrows raised high. “We’re getting close to the Temple now. Let’s keep going.”

Sera began to avoid the fennec she had bonded with so quickly, and it happily ignored her, staying close to its mistress as they carved their way through scores of red templars and behemoths to reach the Temple of Mythal.

These lands had been left to time since he had last seen them in reality, lush in their overgrowth. Solas remembered when the plants were carefully manicured, no part of nature left uncontrolled in the majesty of the elven empire.

They reached the entrance to the sanctum of Mythal and stopped for a moment, Morrigan explaining where they were as the Inquisitor argued with her about the supposed Well of Sorrows and Eluvian that lay inside.

Solas looked around him in sorrow at the ruin of the temple. He had dreamed of it so recently, in all its glory, and now that memory was distorted by the sad reality of how time had taken all he had. Its great pillars lay shattered around them, no surface untainted by the reach of plant life.

Ahead of him, Sulahn’nehn stepped onto one of the temple’s magical paths, the stone under her glowing blue. He was glad to see some power remained in this ancient place, lost as it was to the ages.

“This is Elven, isn’t it?” Sulahn’nehn squinted at an inscription on a pillar, unable to decipher its ancient glyphs in all her studying of elven mysteries. So much was lost to her that Solas could not truly restore. Understanding the alphabet would never allow her to understand the full nuance of the language. “Does it say anything about the Well of Sorrows?”

“Atish’all vir abelasan” supplied Solas. “It means ‘enter the path of the Well of Sorrows’.” He stopped himself there. If he read it all aloud, someone would question his ability to read ancient elven so well, something that was impossible even for Morrigan as she squinted and stumbled over the words. “There is something about knowledge… respectful or pure… shiven, shivennen…”

Solas bit his tongue as the witch sighed and shrugged at his vhenan. “’Tis all I can translate. That it mentions the Well is a good omen.” Sulahn’nehn nodded. “At least we know the Well of Sorrows was important.”

Some of them knew better than others. He had dreamed of the Well, too, so recently, the sorrowful tears, thoughts and memories of thousands of worshippers filling it drop by drop as they belated the murder of their goddess. The souls that threw their whole beings in, driven to desperation by Andruil’s blighted messengers. This was sacred ground, and Solas dreaded what his vhenan may choose to do at his side.

He had to be careful here, not to speak too much, lest he betray himself in front of not only his love, but Morrigan and the others. Cole knew, the compassionate spirit ever reaching into the depths of his painful memories, but he was no threat to him; the others rarely understood his abstract ramblings. He did not trust the witch, helpful as she was, and Sera was prone to drunkenly blabbing their secrets to anyone who cared to listen in the tavern of Skyhold.

Solas ached with yearning to tell his vhenan everything right there; to explain their surroundings, to guide her through the paths. But it would change everything, again, if he revealed himself. He had to wait.

“Supplicants to Mythal would have first paid obeisance here. Following their path may aid entry,” suggested the dark haired witch. Of course, the inscription had stated so plainly, but Morrigan could not have truly understood it.

Solas watched Sulahn’nehn carefully and daintily hop across the stones, fennec at her side, carving a path that never looked back. Soon, the whole puzzle lit up, and Solas smiled proudly. “Well done!” said Morrigan from beside him. “Let us see what awaits.”

They ascended the great stairs toward the inner sanctum, remarking at the bodies of dead Venatori mages they stepped over to reach the great door. They stopped at the sight of the Venatori lieutenant, Calpernia, surrounded by soldiers.

“Don’t let them pass!” shouted the blonde Tevinter mage as the soldiers now streamed towards them. She jumped down into the ruined depths of the shrine.

They made short work of the small group of zealots as Solas pulled them together for Sulahn’nehn and the others to easily focus their barrage. “Come on! We might catch them,” called Sulahn’nehn as she approached the crevice in the floor. Morrigan blocked her. “Hold, a moment. While they rush ahead, this leads to our true destination. We should walk the petitioner’s path, as before.”

Solas approved of her advice. “In this case, I must agree with the witch. This is ancient ground, deserving of our respect.” Morrigan nodded at him, and continued. “You see the urgency. We cannot find the Well of Sorrows unprepared.”

Sulahn’nehn raised a distrustful eyebrow at the barely-clad enchantress. “You’re very eager to reach our destination,” she said cautiously. “Are we not all eager to stop Corypheus from achieving his mad plan?” retorted the witch coldly. Sulahn’nehn crossed her arms, frowning. “It sounds like what you _want_ is that Well.”

Morrigan walked ahead, beckoning Sulahn’nehn to follow her as they spoke privately. Sulahn’nehn eventually smiled and the fennec pawed at Morrigan’s legs, her words clearly convincing the young elf in the purity of Morrigan’s intentions.

Ameliorated, Sulahn’nehn and Morrigan returned their party, the elf nodding at him in affirmation of Morrigan’s trustworthiness. Solas wished he had heard their discussion, for he still did not trust the witch. They pressed on into the temple, facing three more puzzles, each one dedicated to a different god’s path.

Sulahn’nehn insisted on exploring the temple more, asking Morrigan about what she knew of the elven gods in Solas’s stony silence. “My people worship Mythal as a goddess,” she mused, looking around at the great temple. “So one assumes,” replied Morrigan. “What is a god but a being of immense power? The dread Old Gods were nothing more than dragons, after all. They rise as archdemons, and they die. Perhaps Mythal was a powerful elf, a ruler among her kind. History often plays storyteller with facts.”

Morrigan was closer to the truth than the Dalish, but she dismissed the nature of the power that Mythal truly held, in folly. “You admit lack of knowledge, and yet dismiss her so readily?” Solas retorted, not ready to explain should she demand a proper argument.

“I do not dismiss her. I question her supposed divinity.” insisted Morrigan. “One not need be a god to have value. Truthfully, I am uncertain Mythal was even a single entity. The accounts are… varied.”

“There are varied accounts of Mythal?” asked the small elf, her interest piqued. “In most stories, Mythal rights wrongs while exercising motherly kindness,” responded the witch. “‘Let fly your voice to Mythal, deliverer of justice, protector of Sun and Earth alike.’ Others paint her as dark, vengeful. Pray to Mythal, and she would smite your enemies, leaving them in agony.”

“More Dalish tales, I assume?” sighed Solas. Even the memory of his friends had been twisted and warped by time. “If you know more about this, Solas, speak,” said his vhenan sharply, seemingly annoyed by his chosen silence in this ancient temple.

“The oldest accounts say Mythal was both of these, and neither. She was the mother, protective and fierce. That is all I will say. This is not a place to stir up old stories.” Morrigan would not let him have the last word. “Whatever the truth, all accounts of Mythal end the same: exiled to the Beyond with her brethren.” All accounts wrong, as usual. Solas did not press the argument.

“What do you mean, ‘exiled’?” asked the red-haired mage, her sweet voice ringing through the ruins. Solas wondered how little had been passed down to her of the events. Morrigan answered her, confident in her misinformation. “Tricked by the Dread Wolf, as all elven gods were said to be, trapped in a land beyond the Fade. Many Dalish believe this is why the elves fell from grace and their gods did not save them. Or perhaps they were simply rulers slain by Tevinter. Who can say?” Solas bit his tongue and kept his silence as they explored the ruins further.

They soon came to one of his great, watching statues. “Why would this be here?” muttered Morrigan. “Something wrong?” asked his vhenan as she moved to touch it reverently, bending to copy an inscription at its base. “It depicts the Dread Wolf, Fen’Harel,” said the witch in confusion. “In elven tales, he tricks their gods into sealing themselves away in the beyond for all time. Setting Fen’Harel in Mythal’s greatest sanctum is as blasphemous as painting Andraste naked in the Chantry.”

Solas bristled silently at the statement, and Sulahn’nehn unknowingly came to his defense. “My clan set statues of the Dread Wolf outside our camp. They’re meant to frighten harmful spirits.” Morrigan raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps. I thought the ancient elves above such quaint superstitions.”

Solas could not resist snapping at her ignorance. “For all your ‘knowledge’, Lady Morrigan, you cannot resist giving legend the weight of history. The wise do not mistake one for the other.” The witch glared at him. “Pray tell, what meaning does our ‘elven expert’ sense lurking behind this?” she asked sarcastically. “None we can discern by staring at it!” he retorted quickly. “Stop, you two. We’ll study this later,” Sulahn’nehn said, cutting their argument short as she finished her rubbing of the inscription on the statue and stood, touching Solas’s arm soothingly as she motioned to them all to keep moving.

She eventually began on Falon’Din’s path, owl statues guarding its stones, carefully stepping to avoid any tiles that were already lit. It took her a few attempts, but she refused to give up, stopping at the staircase to remember the incorrect paths she had already tried. Finally, the area lit with a shimmer of light and tinkling music, and they pressed ahead to the next path.

They reached Andruil’s path as Solas stifled his sad sigh to avoid the notice of his companions. Mythal had created these puzzles to honor her beloved friends among the gods. Falon’Din and Dirthamen came into their godhood first, a testament to the joined will of the existing self-styled gods, not true siblings but favored elven slaves of each god, granted immeasurable power by Elgar’nan and Mythal during the same ritual.

They gained the power and will to petition the very stars for more, who granted them their aspects in an admission of worthiness. Such it was that Falon’Din gained the power of the clan of powerful beings of light that called themselves Tenebrium, and Dirthamen gained the power of Eluvia, ascending from mere elven beings into those blessed by the constellations themselves.

Then came Elgar’nan’s great campaign of vengeance against the sun itself, who the ancient elves considered their maker. As Mythal travelled the land gathering the remnants of magic left by her vengeful lover’s spell, cleaning up after his great temper tantrum, she began to make use of the leftover power, forming the glowing rocks touched by magic into a massive orb that she levitated into the sky above them for the ages to witness.

She gifted the rest to Andruil, one of her brightest followers, a skilled huntress who quickly became consumed by her new power even as she successfully petitioned to the skies and received the blessings of the constellation Servani, her aspect now fully attuned to the subjugation and sacrifice of the creatures she happily hunted.

As Sulahn’nehn stepped deftly through the path, Solas gazed at the statues above them in dismay, their bows pointing eternal stone arrows never to fire. Mythal, the All-Mother, had never expected her own beloved friend and surrogate daughter to betray her so coldly. But when Andruil’s madness made her a liability and Mythal delivered justice on the pantheon’s behalf, the embarrassment of having her powers stripped made Andruil cruelly vengeful, and her retribution came swift and silent.

The path cleared in a beam of blue light, and she stepped back towards him with her strange pet obediently in tow, its light steps never disturbing the tiles beneath it. They climbed the stairs as a group, Solas in quiet contemplation and Cole simply distracted while Sera affected an angry silence at the area’s pervasive _elfyness._

They finally came to his own path, great wolf statues guarding the tiles as Sulahn’nehn carefully stepped through, stopping to pull the lever that represented the great Veil he had worked so hard to create to protect the earth from the effects of magic, the first great offense that led to war between the power hungry beings. Mythal had taken his side in the great debate, and included him with honor in her symbolic guard outside her sanctum.

Solas smiled as he watched her complete the path with care, remembering his own ascendance that led to his inclusion in this group of great leader-elves. He was no peer of theirs, and no god had granted him the power that drew the many-starred constellation Fenris to him as he walked the Fade as a youth. It was his own rebellious spirit, his passionate fury at the horrors of the slavery that pervaded Arlathan’s entire structure, his desire for change at any cost, that called the wolf to him.

He had befriended the strange beast, its great eyes gleaming as he opened his rebellious young heart to its power and became Fen’Harel, Dread Wolf, shedding his former name as he took on his new aspect with pride. He was no stranger to shedding his name, now. That pride had been the root of his own downfall, in the end. And the wolf now shadowed him invisibly in guilt, forcing him to press on in the strangely altered waking world to amend his past mistakes.

Sulahn’nehn passed through the open gate, treading carefully as she finally completed the puzzle. Solas patted her shoulder in quiet appreciation as they made their way into the sanctum. They entered the oddly intact room, stopping in suspicion. “We’re being watched,” said Sulahn’nehn quietly as elven sentinels appeared behind them.

“Venavis” came a strong, familiar elven voice from the hooded figure above them. “You… are unlike the other invaders. You stumble down our paths at the side of one of our own.” Solas was startled at the reference to him. He hoped the others did not catch it. “You bear the mark of magic which is… familiar. How has this come to pass? What is you connection to those who first disturbed our slumber?”

“They are my enemies, as well as yours,” Sulahn’nehn called back to him confidently. The hooded elf, face marked in green vallaslin of Mythal, considered her words. “I am called Abelas. We are sentinels, tasked with standing against those who trespass on sacred ground.”

Solas remembered him, in his prime, a mournful figure ever at Mythal’s side, breaking away only to fetch her anointed rags to nourish her in uthenera. Andruil had taken advantage of this regular break to cruelly slaughter the goddess in her sleep and disappear, leaving the sentinel to assess the scene in horror upon his return. Her involvement was not proven for years. And here the elf stood in the crumbling ruins of the forgotten temple to his mistress, ever watching, a sentinel bound to service for millennia and counting.

“We wake only to fight, to preserve this place,” Abelas continued. “Our numbers diminish with each invasion.” Solas sorrowed at the implications of his words, countless noble sentinels lost in the shemlen’s vain and fruitless attempts to seek treasures and glory. “I know what you seek. Like all who come before you, you wish to drink from the Vir Abelas’an.”

“The place of the way of sorrows. He speaks of the well,” whispered Morrigan to the Inquisitor furtively. “It is not _for_ you, continued Abelas powerfully. “It is not for _any_ of you.” Indeed, Solas had no wish to use it, aware as he was of the price he would have to pay for fragments of the knowledge he already possessed.

“What is the Vir Abelas’an, exactly?” pressed Sulahn’nehn, impetuous in her curiosity. Solas was glad for her inquisitive nature. It suited an Inquisitor, after all. Abelas responded without hesitation. “It is a path, one walked only by those who toiled in Mythal’s favor.” Morrigan turned to them again, to interject; “He speaks of priests, perhaps?” Abelas continued. “More than that you need not know.”

“So..” his vhenan pressed further, her excitement rising, “you’re _actual elves from ancient times_? Before the Tevinter Imperium destroyed Arlathan?” Solas was pleased she took the news with such joy, the hope that she would not reject his own revelation bubbling up in him once more, though her incorrect understanding of the fall of Arlathan still peeved him.

Abelas shared his annoyance. “The shemlen did not destroy Arlathan,” he responded, shaking his head. “We elvhen warred upon ourselves. By the time the doors to this sanctuary closed, our time was over. We awaken only when called, and each time find the world more foreign than before.” Solas empathized more with this ancient elf than any mortal he had yet encountered on his quest.

“It is meaningless. We endure. The Vir Abelas’an must be preserved.” Sulahn’nehn shook her head at Abelas’s despondent words, turning to him. “Solas, perhaps he’ll listen to you.”

“What shall I say, Inquisitor?” he replied, shrugging. “Shall I sway him from a millennia of service by virtue of our shared blood? He clings to all that remains of this world, because he lacks the power to restore it.” Abelas’s position was not so different from his own.

“We did not come here to fight you, nor to steal from your temple,” Sulahn’nehn said to Abelas in a soothing tone. It appeased the elf, who nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “Trespassers you are, but you have followed rites of petition. You have shown respect to Mythal. If these others are enemies of yours, we will aid you in destroying them. When this is done, you shall be permitted to depart, and never return.”

“This is our goal, is it not?” reminded Solas gently. He did not want more elvhen blood on his hands. “There is no reason to fight these sentinels.” Morrigan turned to offer less noble advice. “Consider carefully. You must stop Corypheus, yes, but you may also need the Well for your own.”

“I accept your offer,” Sulahn’nehn called out, much to Solas’s relief as the ancient sentinel responded. “You will be guided to those you seek. As for the Vir Abelas’an. it shall not be despoiled, even if I must destroy it myself.” He turned to an inner chamber and disappeared. “No!” shouted Morrigan as she turned into a great bird with a flash, following Abelas out towards the Well.

“Mythal’enaste,” came a soft voice behind them from a truly ancient elf, her back creaking from the weight of her years as she led them out. They followed their guide through a series of chambers, stopping occasionally to fight more Venatori soldiers and gawk at their perfectly preserved surroundings.

Sulahn’nehn took great interest in the mosaics that peppered the walls of the temple, stopping for minutes at a time to fully examine and sketch a copy of each one to Sera’s exasperation, carefully examining the materials and techniques used in its crafting up close before stepping back to observe the work as a whole in the firelight. Now was perhaps not the time for study, although it was unlikely they would be allowed to return.

“They’re all bald,” she noted, in front of a great mosaic of Sylaise. “Solas, you’d have fit right in there.” She grinned at him as he raised his eyebrows, unsure of how to respond. Indeed, he would have.

She stopped in fascination to read the scattered parchments that lay on the ground, revealing the truths of what the Dalish had miscommunicated of their own religion over the ages, her eyes widening as she came to a new understanding of her own gods.

“They were all just people, weren’t they? Really powerful people, consumed by their own power, who considered themselves gods. Not so different from Corypheus.”

Solas smiled. She was so close. “Corypheus is no god. He lacks the true power the ancient elves possessed.” In his vain attempts to grasp any ancient power he could find to augment him, Corypheus had completely failed to ascertain the true means to godhood. Instead of calling to the skies, he took fragments of the powers of other gods, a highly inefficient approach.

“Listen to this part! ‘Andruil put on armor made of the Void, and all forgot her true face. She made weapons of darkness, and plague ate her lands. She howled things meant to be forgotten, and the other gods became fearful Andruil would hunt them in turn.’” She read aloud in wonder at a tale that had long been forgotten by her people. “That sounds sort of like the Blight, doesn’t it? Did Andruil cause the Blight? She sounds like an arsehole in this text either way. I can’t wait to send a copy to my brother, it’ll ruin him.”

Solas laughed at Sulahn’nehn’s interpretation, sharing her opinion of the power-mad goddess. “The Blight was indeed a problem for ancient elves, as certain texts suggest. However, I doubt a single mage was the cause.”

“I’ve got so much amazing stuff to think about now, thanks to this place. I’m so glad it’s been left untouched” Sulahn’nehn grinned as she carefully rolled up the codex and put it away.

They came upon a gilded statue of Falon’Din, Morrigan discussing the god’s legends while his vhenan shared how her clan had twisted the tales. Solas found a prime opportunity to shed some light on this god of darkness.

“I do not believe they sing songs about Falon’Din’s vanity,” suggested Solas. The Inquisitor turned to him, enthused. She seemed so happy here, amid so many legends she grew up hearing. “Do you know any legends?” she asked him, her green eyes shining with joy. Although he knew he could not reveal too much, he could not deny her this, not when she looked at him so lovingly.

“It is said Falon’Din’s appetite for adulation was so great, he began wars to amass more worshippers. The blood of those who wouldn’t bow low filled lakes as wide as oceans. Mythal rallied the gods, once the shadow of Falon’Din’s hunger stretched across her own people. It was almost too late. Falon’Din only surrendered when his brethren bloodied him in his own temple.”

Sulahn’nehn listened to his tale in rapt wonder, her mouth agape. “My clan never told a story like that about Falon’Din,” she exclaimed. “The further the Dalish spread, the further their stories branch and grow,” Solas explained. “Never mistake them for arbiters of ‘true’ elvhen culture.” Sulahn’nehn simply nodded at him wisely, well aware of the holes in her own culture, as her keeper had often sent her to the very shemlen they despised to retrieve essays and tomes on elven mysteries.

They carried on in their path, following their wizened guide through the sacred halls. They came to another gilded statue, this time of Andruil, and stopped to admire it. “The elven goddess Andruil, lady of the hunt,” mused the dark-haired mage. “Or a goddess of sacrifice, to some,” added Solas, his heart heavy with memory as he gazed upon the statue of the woman he once spurned. “Truly?” responded the mage with a raised brow, “I wonder if that is why Andruil’s patron animal is the hare. ’Tis said the Dalish invoke her before a chase, especially if they happen to be stalking humans.”

Sulahn’nehn rolled her eyes at the usual story of Dalish barbarism. “My clan avoided human settlements, never mind razing them.” “A sound tactic, if one has room to maneuver out of harm’s way,” replied the witch. “Other Dalish clans do not keep so scrupulously hidden.”

They soon encountered the Venatori leader and her soldiers. “Stand aside, Inquisitor,” called the shemlen mage blocking their path. “And you are…?” asked the elf.  
“I am called Calpernia, but when I partake of the Well, names will be meaningless. Leave. Now is not your time.” Sulahn’nehn was undaunted. “Take one more step toward that well, and I’ll finish you,” she warned, stepping forward. The Tevinter turned to look at the grotto. “The Well of Sorrows overflows with knowledge. Power abandoned by those the elves worshipped as gods. To walk the fade without the Anchor- that is what the Well of Sorrows will give Corypheus.”

Sulahn’nehn sneered. “Why would Corypheus think entering the Fade will work any better than last time?” “Speech without understanding,” dismissed the Venatori. “I knew you would take the Well for yourself, to ransack its wisdom to try to defeat Corypheus. Come then. One last sacrifice!” She rallied her soldiers as they charged toward them.

They sliced through the soldiers easily, now used to penetrating dragon hides. At the end, Calpernia warped through the Fade to reach the precipice toward the Well. “If I fall, it will not be by your hand,” she gasped, tossing herself into the ravine below as Abelas and Morrigan’s chase reached them. A sad end.

Abelas ran up the stairs to the well, his steps welcomed by green light, but Morrigan was swift on the wing and landed to block him as Sulahn’nehn followed behind.

“You heard his parting words, Inquisitor,” said the ruthless witch. “The elf seeks to destroy the Well of Sorrows!” The sentinel shook his head in defeat, sighing. “So the sanctum is despoiled at last.”

“You would have destroyed the Well yourself, given the chance!” exclaimed Morrigan. “To keep it from your grasping fingers,” Abelas retorted. “Better it be lost than bestowed upon the undeserving!”

“Fool,” spat the witch. “You’d let your people’s legacy rot in the shadows!” Sulahn’nehn stepped up to calm her. “Corypheus needed Calpernia to use the Well. Without her, there’s no ‘vessel’ to claim it.”

“The moment we leave, he will send more forces to secure this place,” insisted Morrigan. “The Well clearly offers power, Inquisitor. If that power can be turned against Corypheus, can we afford not to use it?”

“Do you even know what you ask?” responded Abelas sadly, turning to the well with a gesture. “As each servant of Mythal reached the end of their years, they would pass their knowledge on… through this. All that we were, all that we knew, it would be lost forever.”

Sulahn’nehn offered comfort to the ancient elves in her response. “It can’t be easy, holding on to what’s left.” Abelas shook his head and replied, “You cannot imagine. Each time we awaken, it slips further from our grasp.” Solas understood deeply what he meant. The world continued to change without them, and the lost secrets of the past grew ever more lost.

“There are other places, friend. Other duties. Your people yet linger,” soothed Solas, dropping his careful silence to reassure his old friend, though he could not be sure Abelas recognized him.

“Elvhen such as you?” asked the ancient sentinel as he backed away. Solas ignored Sulahn’nehn’s sharp, searching gaze as he replied honestly. “Yes. Such as I.” Abelas examined his face curiously for a moment, still not seeming to truly recognize him, before he continued.

“You have shown respect to Mythal, and there is a righteousness in you I cannot deny. Is that your desire? To partake of the Vir Abelas’an as best as you can, to fight your enemy?” “Not without your permission,”the former dirthenera said gently, bowing her head at the older elf. Her lifelong training as a priestess had perhaps prepared her for little more than a moment such as this.

“One does not obtain permission. One obtains the right.” Abelas began to walk away in defeat, stopping to warn the Inquisitor. “The Vir Abelas’an may be too much for a mortal to comprehend. Brave it if you must, but know you this: you shall be bound forever to the will of Mythal.”

Sulahn’nehn’s eyes widened as Morrigan sneered at her side. “Bound? To a goddess that no longer exists, if she ever did?” asked the witch carelessly. “Bound, as we are bound,” emphasized the ancient elf. “The choice is yours.”

“Is it possible Mythal might still exist?” asked Sulahn’nehn in a near whisper, closer than she had ever been to proof of the true might of the gods the Dalish had worshipped blindly without blessing. “Anything is possible” replied Abelas shortly.

Morrigan interjected. “Elven legend states that Mythal was tricked by Fen’Harel and banished to the Beyond.” This witch was stubborn, noted Solas; it was the third time she had mentioned the old tale that day, and he had already argued against it once. Abelas, to his credit, bristled in anger as he spoke. “‘Elven’ legend is wrong. The Dread Wolf had nothing to do with her murder.”

“Murder?” exclaimed Morrigan in surprise. “I said nothing of-“

“She was slain, as a god truly can be,” Abelas continued. “Betrayed by those who destroyed this temple. Yet the Vir Abelas’an remains. As do we. That is something.”

“Are you leaving the temple?” asked his vhenan gently. Abelas considered her again for a moment before responding. “Our duty ends. Why remain?”

“There is a place for you, lethallin, if you seek it.” said Solas, filled with sorrow for this elf’s sad life. Abelas turned to him, nodding. “Perhaps there are places the shemlen have not yet touched.”

Abelas sighed. “It may be that only uthenera awaits us. The blissful sleep of eternity, never to awaken. If fate is kind.” He made it sound so enticing. Solas, in his many lonely years, often longed to leave this twisted world and return to uthenera himself.

“You could come with us,” suggested Sulahn’nehn. “Fight Corypheus. He killed your people.”  
“We killed ourselves, long ago,” said the ancient sentinel wistfully, shaking his head. “Malas amelin na halam, Abelas,” said Solas, breaking his silence to again reassure his old friend, who nodded and turned to walk away.

“His name. Abelas means sorrow,” said Solas quietly as they surrounded the well. “I said… I hope he finds a new name.” Not quite the truth, but true in essence. He told him his duties had come to an end, reminding him that he was now free to choose a new path and a new name to suit it.

“You’ll note the intact Eluvian? I was correct on that count, at least,” sighed Morrigan, observing the great mirror that lay beyond the Well. “Is it still a threat? Can Corypheus use it to travel the Fade?” asked the fire mage.

“You recall when I took you through my Eluvian that I said each required a key? The well _is_ the key. Take its power, and Mythal’s last Eluvian will be no more use to Corypheus than glass.” said Morrigan, focused on the dark waters ahead of them. “I did not expect the Well to feel so… hungry.” Solas trusted her even less at these words. It was not the Well that hungered for more power.

“Let’s not be reckless. I don’t want anyone hurt,” warned the scarlet-covered elf. Morrigan pondered for a moment, and turned to her gravely. “I am willing to pay the price the Well demands. I am also the best suited to use its knowledge in your service.”

“Or more likely, to your own ends,” Solas interjected.”What would you know of my ‘ends’, elf?” she snapped angrily in response. “You are a glutton drooling at the sight of a feast,” he sneered. “You cannot be trusted.” Sulahn’nehn simply looked at him, calmly and sadly.

There was no outcome here that would not anger him. If Morrigan drank from the Well, he did not trust what she would do with the power, even under the Inquisitor’s control. And if Sulahn’nehn drank, and bound her sweet young spirit, barely in its full power yet, to the will of Mythal, that… that would be so much worse.

“Of those present, I alone have the training to make use of this,” urged the witch. “Let me drink, Inquisitor.”

Sulahn’nehn seemed wary of the Well, staring into it from afar, reluctant to drink herself in fear of its price but still mistrusting the shapeshifting witch. She started at Morrigan’s words. “You alone? This is _my_ heritage!” she exclaimed, drawing no closer to the dark water. Morrigan pleaded with her more, boasting of her studies into ancient mysteries, but the elf was not convinced.

“What about you, Solas?” she asked gently, turning to him. He frowned deeply. He would never accept such a burden, and he would not have wished it on her, either. “No. Do not ask me again.”

Morrigan continued to plead, as Sulahn’nehn shook her head in wonder at her badgering. “You’re not concerned about the price? ‘Bound forever to the will of Mythal?’” said the young elf, her brow furrowing at the thought of being a willing slave to another for eternity as her own fellow dirthenera had in the millennia that passed.

Morrigan laughed. “Bound to the will of a dead god? It seems an empty warning. Perhaps a compulsion yet remains. Who can say otherwise? I do not fear it, even so.”

“What’s to stop you from taking the knowledge and leaving?” demanded the elf, echoing the suspicious of their entire party. “My word,” said the witch simply. “If that seems insufficient, Corypheus threatens us all- even myself. He must be stopped.”

“And who stops you?” his vhenan asked, her eyes narrowing. Morrigan emphasized her good intentions weakly as the elf turned to Solas. “Thoughts?”

“She is right about only one thing: we should take the power that lies in that well,” said Solas firmly. Cole swayed to the side, shaking his head. “So many voices. They would be in your head, talking over you. You don’t want them.”

“It’s yours,” sighed the elf to the witch, stepping back as the brunette enchantress walked into the deep pool, smiling in her victory. They ducked as she entered the water and its depths exploded out and over the sides, drenching their party in ancient tears and leaving the well a dry basin. Morrigan lay unconscious on the ground as the Inquisitor ran to her.

“Are you all right?” said the elf as the witch began to mutter in elvhen. “Ellasin selah! Vissan… vissanalla…” She stood, stumbling. “I am intact. There is much to sift through. But now we can…” A familiar cloud of darkness appeared at her feet as she pointed up to the temple’s entrance where Corypheus now stood in fury. They jumped through the Eluvian as the blighted, thwarted magister approached them, running through the in-between lands as Morrigan led them to her Eluvian in Skyhold. They tumbled through the mirror, elves, humans and spirits alike, safely far from Corypheus’s reach.

Solas brushed himself off and began to walk to his chambers downstairs as the white fennec quietly sat and stared at him. He wondered again why it was there. To spy on the Inquisitor? To bestow on her some great blessing? If it intended to give her some form of power, why had it not done so already? What was it waiting for? His answers would not come easily, he knew.

His heart’s enthusiasm for Abelas’s nature that day gave him hope that, perhaps, he could reveal some of his true nature to her without betraying his goals entirely. He had much to consider before meeting his love in private again.


	13. Song of Despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Sulahn'nehn fills him with hope for the future, Solas takes Sulahn'nehn to Crestwood in the Fade to tell her everything. He's incredibly conflicted, and opts for a cop-out instead. Later, he meets a mysterious being alone in the Fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so lore-heavy it's basically a rewrite of a theory I wrote on reddit once ;)
> 
> I did a lot of research into this scene before I was even mentally urged to write this fic. [This](http://imgur.com/a/Q69uq#1) is the area he takes you to in Crestwood... the story in the murals is basically what I interpret as what happened to Arlathan. I took a bunch of screenshots (the linked are not mine) of the area just because I was certain he took you there for _some_ reason.
> 
> This chapter also features Astrakhan's Complete Theory of What Happened to Arlathan.
> 
> The stuff about Judex and constellations is my head canon, but it makes sense to me...
> 
> Also, I haven't seen anyone else interpret the breakup scene as them being in the Fade instead of actually in Crestwood. Crestwood is far as fuck away, why would he take you there just to break up with you and leave alone? Seems really awkward. Also, it looks different in the scene. Just my opinion.

Solas surveyed the fresh fresco on his wall as Sulahn’nehn tumbled a little more gracefully down from the tower above him, landing on her feet aside his table with a soft rustle. He turned to face his vhenan as he spoke.

“The Temple of Mythal was extraordinary,” he sighed. “In all my journeys, I never dreamed of finding anything like it.” It was not _quite_ a lie… he never dreamed of _finding_ it, only of seeing it destroyed. He had not known where in the overgrown Arbor Wilds it now lay. He had pressing matters to attend to now, in any case.

“What will you do with the power of the Well once Corypheus is dead?” he asked her, his tone now gravely serious. They were close to defeating the magister now, the Inquisitor gradually stripping him of his armies until only his dragon remained. But the power the Well granted was eternal, and Morrigan still bowed to the Inquisitor’s influence. For now.

She looked up at him, brimming with confidence, smiling as she spoke. “The war proved that we can’t go back to the way things were. I’ll try to help this world move forward.”

Such confident words from such a young soul. Solas saw much of his younger self in her, so arrogant in the fearlessness of her actions, in her attempts to broker a new kingdom for the elven people through her puppet empress Celene. He spoke to her now as he would have spoken to himself, if he could have imparted the wisdom granted by time to his foolish young self.

“You would risk everything you have in the hope that the future is better? What if it isn’t? What if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than what was?”

He spoke passionately, letting his guard slip in his words. He did not want her to repeat his great mistakes, to suffer the guilt he carried in the wake of his own failed attempts to better the world.

Sulahn’nehn was resolute, undaunted by his words. “I’ll take a breath, see where things went wrong and try again.” She looked straight into his eyes as she spoke and Solas felt another twinge of admiration for this young elf. Perhaps she had much to teach him, in her own way.

He followed his quest begrudgingly, out of guilt, but she was dauntless in her own. She refused to give in to her own mistakes in all regards, even as she fell from cliffs on their travels, climbing them again right away in her attempts to reach more shards. Perhaps her stubborn spirit was why she insisted on playing more games of Wicked Grace against Josephine. He often eased her frustrations when she tipsily stormed into his chambers late at night after yet another loss.

“Just like that?” asked Solas softly. It seemed almost too easy, the way she spoke of it. To just brush yourself off and try again. He had tried so many times, and seemingly continually failed to create the world he dreamed of.

“If we don’t keep trying, we’ll never get it right,” she said cheerfully. Her words seemed almost naive, but they held such a deep wisdom, one that had escaped him until he grew to know and love her. He smiled, soothed in his own frustrations. That was all he had to do; keep trying, with his mistakes in mind, and hope that this time it would work.

“You’re right. Thank you.” he said to her gravely, words he did not have cause to utter often. She had brought so much light and hope into his life. She looked at him now, confused. Perhaps she was as surprised by his words as he was. “For what?” she asked softly, tilting her chin down even as she looked up at him, her green eyes growing ever larger and more beautiful in his lovingly held gaze.

“You have not been what I expected, Inquisitor” he replied to his heart. “You have… impressed me. You have offered hope that if one keeps trying, even if the consequences are grave, that someday, things will be better.”

At that moment, he could imagine no better world without her by his side. But he knew his own plans and hers were at sore odds. He could not betray himself for a mortal elf, no matter how much he truly loved her, not after his fury at Felassan’s betrayal that led to his waking. She gave him hope that perhaps, this time, his plans would not fail, that he could try to unlock the great Eluvian that trapped his people and find another way to cure the Blight that corrupted them. Once he had the orb.

He sighed. “Forgive my melancholy. Corypheus has cost us much. The Temple of Mythal did not deserve such a fate. The orb he carries, and its stolen power- that, at least, we may still recover.” He smiled at her, his eyes gleaming, ready to show his youthful vhenan such wonders when he came into his own powers again at last. “With luck, some of the past may yet survive.” His mouth twitched a little at his own words, hinting at his own survival ever so slightly. He still wanted nothing more than to tell her everything about his true nature.

She grinned at him, pawing at his arm playfully. “You’re being grim and fatalistic in the hope of getting me into bed, aren’t you?” she said laughingly, biting her lip, a motion that always drew his arduous gaze.

“I _am_ grim and fatalistic,” Solas smirked. “Getting you into bed is just an enjoyable side benefit.” He smiled and caressed her hip. “Come with me, vhenan,” he said to her, motioning to his great couch he used now instead of a bedroll. “Well, that was quick,” she laughed, lying down lightly beside him. He caressed and kissed her forehead as she snuggled into his arms, sighing in happiness as the two dreaming lovers stepped together into the Fade.

He always wanted to show her so much more than her mortal years would have allowed. This time, he guided her to a dark memory of a cave they had already visited in Crestwood. They walked hand in hand through the misty grove, Sulahn’nehn looking around her in curiosity at the ancient murals that surrounded them.

The Veil was so thin here, barely separating the world of the waking from the Fade, affecting both sides of his great barrier. The _setheneran_ \- the tenuous land of waking dreams, as such places were called- was interesting enough in the waking world, a place where hidden memories were more easily found in dreams. He often noted such locations on his travels for future explorations.

But here in the Fade, on the other side of the Veil, the _setheneran_ came into its truest beauty, closest to the world he had known before he created the Veil. Here, the physicality of the mortal world crept into the Fade, infusing it with a hint of reality. Willpower, belief and creativity still reigned here, but what they could shape in this place was a little more tangible than anywhere else in the Fade.

“The veil is thin here,” he said softly. “Can you feel it on your skin, tingling?” He ran his hand through the air, feeling the intoxicating trace of tangibility in the air, so rare in the Fade after he made the Veil to protect the world.

Sulahn’nehn turned to face him, tossing her head in the strangely tingling air, tilting it up to look at him in affectionate anticipation. Her green eyes seemed more luminous than ever in the dim light of the Fade. He smiled at her lovingly as he gently caressed her blood-red vallaslin.

“I was trying to show you some way to determine what you mean to me,” he said gently to his love. His hand slipped from her face down to her waist; she raised a hand to touch her own face in the absence of his hand, smiling girlishly. His fingers tingled from the warm memory of her skin in a way they never did where the Veil was intact. She looked back up at him with a mischievous smile, biting her lip again. “I’m listening, and I can offer a few suggestions,” she flirted, pressing herself closer to him. “I shall bear that in mind,” smiled Solas. She was always so eager for him. “For now, the best gift I can offer is the truth.”

It was time to reveal himself to her. They had bonded so deeply in their spirits, he owed her as much. His eyes creased as he smiled at his love, stroking the narrow plume of scarlet hair that cascaded over her shoulder. “You are unique. In all Thedas, I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. You have become important to me, more important than I ever imagined.”

He would tell her who he was now, how the glories she had considered lost were not altogether lost to their people. He had brought her here for a reason; this was the place he had come to mourn as the war between his brethren raged on, where he had come in quiet, mournful contemplation to depict for the ages the actions of Andruil and Mythal that had led them all to this point. These were his frescoes, ancient and peeling as they were. She would surely recognize his craftsmanship, if she doubted his words.

He would tell her the tale as the Dalish had forgotten it: how Andruil ventured too far into the Void in search of great beasts and brought back with her red crystals that bore a parasitic sickness, slowly infesting all magical life in Elvhenan with the alien Blight. It corrupted the minds of all who touched it, intensifying their great wills and personalities to an uncontrollable level. The gods, who were bound to their symbolic aspects in the way they came by their celestial powers, found their own godly qualities turned against them as they became blighted.

Ghilan’nain fell first, slaughtering her own beloved beasts at her corrupted friend’s urging to increase her own power. Sweet Sylaise, beautiful in her warm light, became ever more controlling and vengeful, urging countless more followers to sing her songs, inflicting fiery death if they did not. Falon’Din, friend of the dead, became obsessed with bringing death to his followers, waging endless wars to simply continue the spilling of blood in his name.

When the corruption and fighting grew too great to bear, the entire pantheon ruled against Andruil in an attempt to stop the Blight. Believing the disease connected to the powers she brought from the Void, Mythal was sent to vanquish her. Andruil was left powerless and angry, but the corruption continued to spread.

Fen’Harel studied endlessly to find a cure for the sickness that now spread through his people. Only Mythal helped him, drawing connections between the blight and magical life. Together, they theorized that severing the ephemeral nature of magic from the mortal world could stop the spread of the Blight by protecting spirits from blighted living things. Thus, they created the Veil at the land now called Skyhold, their followers placing power-boosting artifacts of power at key points throughout the land.

But the creation of the Veil sundered the powers of the elven pantheon, and they reacted in rage. Andruil murdered Mythal with silent daggers in her sleep, like a coward, and blamed Fen’Harel. Shocked and angered by their own diminished power, the actions of his brethren grew crueler and madder, though smaller in their scope. They invaded each other’s temples, destroying millennia of progress. And the Blight still raged.

He drew all of the slowly corrupting Arlathan into a great Eluvian as a last resort, trapping the city and its blighted people in a magical mirror he placed through a complex series of locked Eluvians, finally ending in the sky of the Fade. The spell required all of his power and will, which he focused through an orb as a conduit, the power and will that Sulahn’nehn now held in her hand. When complete, Fen’Harel fell helplessly into involuntary uthenera, his spirit too drained to do anything but sleep. And when he awoke, the world had sorely changed.

“As you are to me,” came her soft voice in adoration as she smiled up at him so trustingly. He knew what he had to tell her. It was time…

As he prepared to speak the words, he imagined the scornful faces of thousands of Dalish through time. He had attempted to reveal himself so many times, repeatedly chased away by superstitious fools.

“Then what I must tell you…” Fen’Harel said, faltering, “the truth.”

Would she spurn him so callously? What if, in her zeal to create a new world for the Dalish and city elves she loved, she turned against him now as he revealed his quest to restore power to the ancients? What if he revealed his plans and she moved to thwart them, the only one who could? He could not betray himself now, sweet and beautiful as she was. No. He had come too far, walked too long alone to lose sight of his path in the brightness of one little mage’s laughing smile. He would tell her a small truth now. But the greater truth, the truth that made him ache, would have to wait.

“Your face. The vallaslin. In my journeys in the Fade, I have seen things. I have discovered what those marks mean.” he said, committing himself to the role of Solas once more as he framed his statement in half-truths.

“They honor the elven gods,” she said simply, a note of concern rising in her voice.

He shook his head sadly. “No. They are slave markings, or at least, they were in the time of Arlathan.”  
She frowned at him, confused, still so naive. “My clan’s Keeper said they honored the gods. These are their symbols.”

“Yes, that’s right,” replied the ancient elf, eyes narrowing sadly in condemnation of his own memories. “A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshipped. After Arlathan fell, the Dalish forgot.”

Sulahn’nehn contemplated his words. “Whatever the marks were before, the Dalish have reclaimed them,” she mused. “They mark me as one of them.”

“I know,” he replied, smiling. “For everything I have said about the Dalish, I admire that indomitable spirit.”

“But… my vallaslin marks me as a follower of Sylaise,” she said with a great sigh. “I only wish I could have chosen it when I was older. I’m not the same person I was when I was 11, even if I was mature enough for the ritual. I don’t consider myself a dirthenera now, not as something I _have_ to do. And whenever I see my own face, I’m only reminded of all the ways I disappoint my own people by not following my role.”

He smiled at her. This was why he had mentioned her vallaslin, over any other small truth he could have offered in its place. In the year he had known her she had changed so much, grown and matured, her pacifist teachings and healing arts slowly slipping from her interest as she entered the throes of battle and leadership with passion. If any Dalish elf would understand and appreciate his gift, it was her, the priestess who no longer bowed her head to Sylaise.

“I didn’t tell you this to hurt you,” he said tenderly, pulling her closer as she turned her head in distress. “If you like, I know a spell. I can remove the vallaslin.” He was glad his scrambling thoughts had landed on her crimson markings as he searched for a truth to replace the one he could not yet admit; now he could truly gift her with something precious. Freedom. A freedom she would appreciate all the more when his own quest ended.

“If what you’re saying is true…” she began hesitantly. “It is,” he reassured her. “Then… My people vowed never to submit to slavery.” She looked him in the eyes with a defiance that was not meant for him. He winced at her words, at the fury in her eyes. “I am so sorry for causing you pain. It was selfish of me. I look at you and I see what you truly are, and you deserve better than what those cruel marks represent.” She thought about it for a moment, gazing at the misty waterfall before turning to him again, smiling. “Then cast your spell. Take the vallaslin away,” she whispered shyly.

He smiled at her beautiful, marked face. “Sit,” he murmured, guiding her to the ground as he kneeled beside her. As he had done so many times before to the anger of his brethren, he raised his hands to her face, willing her marks to release her from Sylaise’s bounds as a blue light shimmered around them. It was easiest in the _setheneran_ , where the seeping tangibility of the Veil allowed him to easily manipulate the magical markings on her real face from the Fade.

She slowly opened her green eyes to him as he basked in the beauty of her unmarred face. Her fresh young skin was smooth and light, the cruel red marks no longer altering its contours, her cheeks reddened with a natural blush. “Ar lasa mala revas” he whispered to his noble beauty. “You are free.”

He stood her up as she gazed at him, unsure. He was the first of this world to truly see her in all her glory, and for that he was thankful. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured, bending to kiss her, running a hand over her delicate curves as she held him tightly.

But as he kissed her, he could not break his mind from the implications of what he had done. Her vallaslin had indirectly bound her to Sylaise; not a direct geas like the Well of Sorrows, but a magical leash that could be activated at the goddess’s whim. It was irrelevant to Sulahn’nehn now, of course… but they were close to retrieving the orb from Corypheus, and he was so close to unlocking the Eluvians. If Sylaise were to return to this world, she would surely have taken advantage of his love’s power, demigoddess as she was in her possession of his Anchor.

And Sylaise had to return to this world, if he was to complete his goals. He had to restore the world to what it was before the deepest magics were forgotten. Blighted as they were, sealing away his brethren had done nothing to stop the Blight in this world. He could not let himself be distracted by his selfish passions. The world was at stake. He should have ended this months ago.

He pulled away from her, breaking the passionate kiss as he frowned in anguish. “And… I am sorry. I distracted you from your duty. It will never happen again.”

Sulahn’nehn reacted with disbelief. “Wait… what? You bring me here, take the vallaslin from my face, and now you just end it?” She stepped away from him, a painful look of betrayal in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I never wanted to hurt you,” he pleaded lamely. This had gone so badly. In his own impulsiveness, he had carried on this mistaken romance, and now he had hurt the one person he had come to truly adore. He should never have let her kiss him in the Fade. He should never have kissed her on her balcony. He remembered now how she urged him to take her virginity with such enthusiasm, and burned with guilt. He had taken so much from her.

“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?” Her previous warmth towards him had already began to cool, her passionate fires turning swiftly to the cutting ice with which she approached Vivienne. She was already shutting herself away from him. Perhaps it was best this way.

“I will see you back at Skyhold,” said Solas, slowly backing away from his broken heart. He slumped away from her, dejected, aching at the pain of controlling his desires so strictly. He did not dare to turn back to look at her. She would likely awaken before him, rise from his arms for the last time, and return to her quarters. Solas closed his eyes and focused on a different memory, anything to take him from her reproachful gaze as he walked away.

He was in the fresco-laden cave in Crestwood again, but this memory was older. The frescoes were fresh, and great spires of light rose above the stone walls to create a magnificently ornate roof, shining with their own magical radiance. This was a minor temple, once. A great Eluvian blocked the cave entrance he had entered through with Sulahn’nehn earlier; in the centre lay a great dais of light, a ritual altar for Falon’Din’s followers.

Solas sank to his knees in sorrowful repose as he clasped his face in his hands. He had turned away the one elf who seemingly understood him most, denying her the chance to understand him even more by telling her the whole truth. He had tried to ameliorate matters by taking her vallaslin, but in his cowardice, he had hurt her even more.

“She won’t forgive you easily, wolf,” came a bevy of disembodied voices in unison from behind him. Solas turned, startled. This was no spirit. Who came to disturb his dreams?

To his surprise, six orbs of light danced in his eyes, revealing themselves as the source of the voices as they continued, “You have steeled her heart.”

Fen’Harel bowed his head to the celestial presence in front of him, slightly relieved by its words. He was no stranger to this form of creature, although his own friends had taken the form of a great wolf.

“My elders. To whom do I owe the honor?” he asked politely.

The orbs danced closer to him, blinding in their light. “We are Judex, the Sword of Judgement. We are here to judge the sorry remnants of when your Maker took a bride. As you draw closer in your goal, so do we.”  
The orbs suddenly coalesced, dimming into a familiar shape: Sulahn’nehn’s pet fennec, Mien’Harel. Solas gave a start, and a sigh. He should have known. Those blue eyes had reminded him of _something_.

“What is your intention for the elf Sulahn’nehn? Why do you pursue her?” he asked the glowing creature, hiding his suspicions in politesse.

“You are ready, but she is not.” the six voices responded in a lilting chorus from the body of the small white fennec. “We await the awakening of the transgressor Elgar’nan, who so sorely insulted our lonely cousin Solium, and the marauder Andruil, who stole from us, to pass our judgement. The elf is the vessel.”

Fen’Harel weighed the implications of the fennec’s celestial words. Like his brethren, and himself, the beings known as stars had chosen an elf of this world on whom to bestow their power. But to what end?

“Of what transgressions do you speak?” asked the Dread Wolf, rising from his knees. He knew the constellation spoke of millennia-old offenses, from the very dawn of Thedas when the lonely sun took the Earth as its lover and created the elvhen people. The Andrastian tales had taken these ancient legends and twisted them to suit the shemlen warrior who led a revolution so long ago.

“Your kind, your very existence, is a plague,” said the fennec sweetly, in its many disjointed voices. “Your Maker, in his folly, took a lady of _stone_ as his lover. The resulting children have proved themselves a nuisance upon this plane of existence.”

“How so, my lords?” asked the fallen god gently, raising an eyebrow at the being’s disdainful words.

“Your brother Elgarn’nan offended us greatly in his arrogance, presuming to cast down one of our own. Your sister Andruil raided our lands for her own selfish power until we seeded her with a plague to send her away. We cannot allow these crimes to go unpunished.” responded the fennec, its voice growing slightly more hostile as it spoke.

Fen’Harel started at the mention of Andruil and the plague. Was _this_ the source of the Blight he had fought for so long? Were the stars, perhaps, the key to the cure? He began to ponder possible solutions as the fennec continued to speak.

“The time draws near enough, Dread Wolf. Will you be the gatekeeper to our judgement?” The small creature stalked towards him, its blue eyes gleaming.

He felt a stirring inside him as his own guardian, Fenrir, urged him to follow Judex’s call. “Ma nuvenin, hahren,” he muttered reverently, his head bowed.

The fennec simply looked at him, its small mouth seemingly curved into a smile.

As Solas awoke on his couch, he found himself alone. Sulahn’nehn had already left his side, of course. He did not expect her to linger. The gap she left in her wake chilled him and left an aching hole in his heart.

He looked to the open doorway. The fennec was sitting there, quietly, still staring at him.


	14. Song of Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas has a hard time with Sulahn'nehn's attitude after they break up. They defeat Corypheus, and spoilers ensue.

Solas heard a soft creak at his door the next morning as painfully familiar footsteps delicately padded towards him. She did not jump from the tower, like she usually did in her mischievous joy at disturbing his focus. He straightened his posture as he struggled to keep himself from giving in, from turning to pull her into his arms and apologize for his abrupt withdrawal. He forced the haunting memories of her soft, warm kisses deep into his mind as he found the right words.

“Inquisitor. How may I help you prepare for our final battle?” he asked gently, his voice constricted, afraid to turn to look at her. He could almost feel her burning glare searing into his back.

“You don’t get out of this that easily,” she snarled quietly, anger lowering her voice. Solas looked down at his table, eyes closed, wincing at his renewed sense of grief. With all he had lost already, he could bear to lose her the least. He responded in a near-whisper, begging her to use her emotion as an opportunity as she silently glowered at him from the corner of his eye. “I understand your anger. I am furious with myself as well. But for now, we must focus on what _matters_. Harden your heart to a cutting edge, and put that pain to good use against Corypheus,” he pleaded.

She did not respond. She glared at him for a moment, her silence slowly despoiled by the furious heaving of her breath. She abruptly turned on her heel and stalked out of his room, slamming the door with a sharp reverberation that filled all of Skyhold. If the others did not already know of their private problems, they would now.

She made him venture out with him again several times that week in the search for armor requisitions, her furious anger at him gradually crystallizing into chilly derision as she spurned his conversation and kept her distance, refusing to even look at him. He wondered why she insisted on bringing him along. It only served to punish them both.

Sera delighted in their severance, mocking him all the more to her friend’s spiteful amusement. “The veil is _fat_ here,” she said in a mockingly solemn voice as they approached a silverite-rich area. Sulahn’nehn did not attempt to conceal her scornful laugh as Solas simply bowed his head in sorrow.

The emotional upheaval of his sudden rejection seemed to have changed her overnight, and even changed her magic. Where her fires had burned wild and hot, they grew ever more focused and searing, the flames shooting from her staff no longer great red fireballs but sharp pinnacles of white light that pierced her foes like arrows.

Her spirit sword grew longer, and brighter, and cut through even stone like water as she swiped at her foes, her inner seething fury only truly evident when she threw herself into battle. Even her fire mines grew more focused, as she cast smaller and brighter runes that reached fewer foes than usual but entirely vaporized the ones that his Pull of the Abyss managed to trap.

As she casually turned an errant Hinterlands bandit to ash in a single flash of blinding white light, the fade-cloaked fennec quietly sat in the midst of battle as it always did, watching her fight in careful approval as her foes passed straight through it.

Solas recalled his disturbing conversation with the celestial clan Judex. _You are ready, but she is not._. Had the creature already begun to bond with her as his own wolf friend once had, infusing her with its power and immortality until the two beings were as one?

His own experience took place entirely in the Fade, and he had no reckoning of the time it had taken him to fully emerge as Fen’Harel. The creature slept with her nightly for months, now, at her own insistence, comfortably embraced by the fennec-loving elf as it sent careful magical feelers into her mind. Perhaps it had begun the process when they first encountered it in the Emprise du Lion.

But why _then ___, why did it choose that moment to reveal itself, as its chosen one basked in death after killing the last dragon in Orlais? A test of her power, perhaps? A measured affront to all of dragon-kind? What did the creature have against the dragons?

Judex spoke of his People as a plague upon the world caused by the joining of the Sun and Moon, but Solas knew the elves were not the only great creatures born out of this holy matrimony; as the elves and spirits rose from the Earth’s heaving womb, the dragons flew down from the Sun to join them. They had lived in harmony for so long, before his brethren grew bored and complacent and hungered for power.

The firstborn elves delighted in the subjugation of other beings, as their own self-worth increased through their devoted worship. Controlling the powerful high dragons made the other elves feel powerful in turn, fulfilled them, gave them purpose. He had always respected them, and never took a dragon of his own, nor any other slave. Wisdom was the only fulfillment he had needed; freedom for all others, his only purpose.

They had little left to do now before attending to Corypheus. With her army still entrenched in the Arbor Wilds, Sulahn’nehn travelled with Morrigan to achieve the means to slay his dragon. She told the others little of this quest, but Solas knew what of Mythal’s power still survived, and he remembered the beautiful high dragon to which she had bound part of her own great spirit so many millennia ago, slumbering through the ages underground until woken by its master’s fellow slave.

As the day of their inevitable battle against Corypheus grew ever closer, Solas found his time in Skyhold growing lonelier still. In Sulahn’nehn’s wake, the others had seemingly withdrawn from him. Dorian no longer called down to him with a wink to ask how his night went. Where once Josephine, Leliana and Dagna would bring him memorandums for the Inquisitor, knowing he would be the first to see Sulahn’nehn and pass it on, they no longer came to his quarters at all. Solas found himself frustrated, embittered, disheartened. He had brought this on himself, in his impulsive selfishness.

He could not even bring himself to finish his fresco. His own emotional upheaval in consciously leaving behind the greatest love he would know bore heavily on his focus, rendering him unable to decide on what to depict. He knew the bounds of his own narrative as he had plotted the walls; this tale would end in the defeat of Corypheus. But what if it didn’t? What if she never survived to hear his truth? What would he depict, then? The thought of painting his fragile, mortal love in her death throes shook him at the core. He wallowed silently, re-reading old texts, basking in his shame and guilt.

He had not only taken her vallaslin, her virginity, and her heart before shutting himself away in fear. He had taken her connection to the Eluvians, to the magic-filled world he loved so tenderly before he made the Veil to protect it. She did not understand the luxury of time he took for granted, often expressing frustrated surprise at how slowly and carefully he worked. Everything that made her truly _elvhen_ was lost long before her birth, and yet in her indomitable spirit she refused to accept that the glories of the past were irretrievable. He admired her so much for that.

She was so different now to the carefree dirthenera he had first met in Haven. The burden of the mark, and the sudden responsibilities of leadership, had changed her. She was still warm, mischievous, melodious, passionate, but only to those close to her, a fact Solas sorely noticed once she withdrew. She no longer performed songs to the requests of others as she had in Haven, silently raising an irritated eyebrow unless the asker’s name was Varric or Sera.

Her late-night cultural sessions in the courtyard with the elves of Skyhold had become weekly, but gradually less traditional in their form; she stepped back fully from her role of dirthenera, no longer bound to hearth fire and song, and the few times Solas accompanied her they had mingled and chatted freely with her fellow elves.

She no longer balked at danger, or at death, as she once had, discouraging Cassandra from slaughtering even the wolves that pursued them in the Hinterlands until she found an amulet to soothe their possessed nerves. In only a year, she had gone from timid da’len to proud warrior. She proved a wisdom that went beyond the dogma the Dalish beat into her, eschewing the path of Sylaise entirely to forge a new one all to herself.

Solas had seen much of the world in his years, and he knew the nature of people. They did not change easily. A new upheaval or burden did not always foretell any sort of epiphany; most people were content to stick their heads in the sand, comfortable with what they already knew of the world, unwilling to learn more or change their minds.

Most people did not have the will or empathy to change, and because of that, change was slow to come to the world. It was only the flighty, the passionate, the _inquisitive_ , who had the will to lead revolutions, to change everything for the better or worse in a short time. And her changes came swiftly. Solas did not expect a person to be so unpredictable. In his great age and luxury of time, he took _naps_ that lasted a year, and often wondered how much she would change if he did so now.

She had proven herself so wise in her actions, in her reasoning, even as she took actions that dismayed him, bringing the Wardens he despised into her ranks to keep a close eye on their order. She had forged alliances for the Inquisition with Nevarra and Antiva, increasing her reputation throughout Thedas, and negotiated regularly with King Alistair and Empress Celene, as the frequent fanfares from the courtyard heralded. When Solas ventured out of his quarters to the kitchen, he often saw Briala smirking at him from the hallway. No doubt she had learned much of the private matter between them.

Before they ventured to the Temple of Mythal, Sulahn’nehn had excitedly confided in Solas of a plan she was carefully negotiating between Orlais and Ferelden. She would build a new empire without a nobility, with a new set of laws promoting freedom and equality for all, and Skyhold would be its center. She had already begun earnest efforts with former Circle enchanters to create an academic institution to replace the Circles she depised.

Solas had tried his best to discourage her, knowing the danger her idyllic fantasy would face in the waking of his brethren, but to no avail. He could not dissuade her with any logic she could not refute with optimism, for which he had no effective rebuke, hopelessly fatalistic as he now was. He could not deny the beauty of her dreams and her optimism, though he knew the world she loved was soon to change.

In their travels, they had encountered much unused yet fertile land in the southern Dales, ruled over by Orlesian lords on one side of the Frostbacks and Fereldan lords on the other. It was a simple enough matter for his cunning vhenan to slowly discredit and embarrass these noblemen with Leliana and Briala’s help, until their ruler disbarred them from their own lands, freeing them to the wealthiest, most important person in line- which, at this point, was Sulahn’nehn herself. Convincing the rulers of Ferelden and Orlais to slowly give up their empires to an elf was no small feat, but in the wake of the Breach, they both owed her their lives.

On a dark afternoon, Josephine burst into his room. “Solas, quickly, you must armor yourself. Corypheus has reopened the Breach. We attack now! Meet at the gates!” She ran out desperately to seek out his other companions. Solas stretched with a sigh, smiling for the first time in days as he moved to his small cupboard to retrieve his armor. The orb was nearly his again.

He had lost the love that once filled his grieving, lonely heart with warmth and light, that was an inescapable truth. But that void to fill had been created by the greater loss of himself, his own will and memories that he had poured into the focus orb only to have it stolen from him. When he had it back, he would feel himself again, surely. Fen’Harel needed no lover to bring him comfort.

Even as he thought the words, his own heart fought back at him, tripping his carefully controlled logic with guilt. He took so much from her, in ways she would never truly understand, in manners that affected her over millenia. He could not help but love her, even as she now scorned him. She was right to be angry with him, more than she knew.

They reached the Valley of Sacred Ashes quickly, the four companions walking in distinct pairs as they observed the roiling breach in the sky. Cole walked by his side, ever compassionate to the pain that he now found difficult to conceal in the wake of the new emotions that added to his long-trapped grief and guilt over his people. Cole had already read aloud his screaming memory of the painful event once, and nearly gave away his secret in front of his angry love, who evidently did not appreciate the sore reminder of their parting. Since then, he had been more careful to control his emotions around the spirit.

Sera walked by Sulahn’nehn, tossing rocks at nearby growths of red lyrium and cracking jokes at the results seemingly in an effort to comfort her own friend, who did not appear particularly distressed. Solas suspected her outward mask had grown as dense and heavy as his own, a glaze of determined focus that belied no other emotion within. She had learned much from the Orlesian nobles, after all.

They approached a clamor of scouts, and Corypheus stood before them, bowing mockingly to his vhenan. “I knew you would come,” he boomed gleefully, weakened until he was forced to face the Inquisitor himself.

She stood undaunted. “It ends here, Corypheus,” she said gravely. Corypheus smirked, raising his fists in electric shocks of red as the remains of the temple collapsed further around them and their battleground began to rise high into the sky like the twisted rocks of the Fade. “And so it shall.”

She stood unhindered, cloaked in the fade as the others fell around her. Corypheus focused his attention on her, mad in his jealousy. “You have been most successful in foiling my plans, but let us not forget what you are,” the magister spat. “A thief, in the wrong place at the wrong time. An interloper. A gnat.” _As are you, da’len,_ Fen’Harel thought sorrowfully to himself as the magister who took his powers took his last stand. “We will prove here, once and for all, which of us is worthy of godhood.”

An interesting choice of words, as the fennec-disguised Judex still sat patiently aside, ever watching, safely out of the magister’s notice. “I didn’t come here to become a god, Corypheus,” the fiery mage retorted. In her actions, foiling the magister’s selfishness and greed at every step, she had come closer than any mortal ever had before, the green mark in her hand glowing ever brighter in the presence of the orb Corypheus stole.

A screech and a clamor heralded the appearance of Corypheus’s dragon, a sight that would have ended the battle a year ago. But with a great golden glimmer, Morrigan in the form of Mythal’s high dragon rose to meet it, matching its power blow for blow as the two great creatures sparred in the scarred sky.

Corypheus stood wide eyed in shock. “You dare…” He continued his lame taunts as Sulahn’nehn ignored his words and focused on the might of her assault, luring him into her mines as she flitted around him invisibly and battered at his guard. Solas focused on freezing and smashing the powerful mage as Sera and Cole invisibly maintained their barrage of arrows on the shades it summoned from afar. The ground beneath them continued to quake, and they ran further afield as the magister taunted them towards the zenith of the ruined temple. With the magister so focused on his arch rival, and the dragon distracted, this was an easy battle for the Inquisitor’s companions.

With a great crash, the two dragons fell to the ground, and Corypheus teleported to a coward’s safety as they faced his mighty slave. Truly, this was no different from the many dragons they had vanquished already, and Solas was glad for his vhenan’s foresight in tactical preparation. As they expertly circled the creature, dodging its magical red shocks, Sulahn’nehn’s sword seemed to grow ever longer and brighter, its white light seemingly diminishing the red lyrium power in the dragon with each hit.

The dragon finally downed, the companions bounded together toward the bright surges of magic where Corypheus now rose again. Sulahn’nehn ran straight for the magister, her eyes gleaming with determined fury as she raised her spirit sword high, its blinding white light overpowering Corypheus’s dim red sparks.

The magister reached further into the depths of his stolen power in his increasing desperation. He finally threw his will into the orb, lashing out with blighted magic as Sulahn’nehn fell back at the force of his fury. “Not like this,” croaked the magister. “I have walked the halls of the Golden City, crossed the ages…” He wrangled with the orb in his hands as it resisted him, green sparks pushing out from the blighted magic he had forced into it. Sulahn’nehn slowly rose as he called to his dead god, her hand aglow.

With a surge, she pulled the orb into her own hand. The magister slunk to the ground, defeated. Sulahn’nehn stared at the orb triumphantly. Fen’Harel could not contain his rush of hope. He was so close now. She had all his power, and she loved him enough to give it back, surely.

A blinding torrent of white light pulsed into the sky as Sulahn’nehn raised her will into the breach, forcing it closed yet again, seemingly without effort or exertion. Fen’Harel resisted the urge to run and grab his precious orb as she tossed it carelessly to the side and stalked towards the cowering magister with a sneer.

“You wanted into the Fade?” she hissed, thrusting her glowing hand towards Corypheus as his blighted face contorted further in agony. With a great burst, she ripped him apart from within, sending him to the Fade from the inside out. She was brutal in her judgement.

Their magically levitated battleground began to crash to the floor as the source of their magic was slowly extinguished. Fen’Harel found himself knocked unconscious as a great rock tumbled towards him.

He opened his eyes to the clearing rubble as he jumped to his feet, determined. The orb must be here, somewhere. He scanned the rubble for the familiar markings until the sight of a broken sphere broke his heart.

As he stepped tenderly towards all he had worked towards in his thousands of years, all the power he had amassed and pushed into this orb simply to keep his own people safe, Fen’Harel heard a rustle as Sulahn’nehn began to follow him.

He could not even stop to think of her now, so great was his grief. His orb lay in pieces, shattered, a simple dark stone, grooved intricately but broken intrinsically. All he had ever learned, all he had studied and amassed, lost forever. He could never replace the power that he had put into this focus.

Fen’Harel kneeled quietly as he cradled the useless stone in his hands, stricken. He did not have the power to open the Eluvian now. He created the magic, and now it was lost. What would he do? All others with the power to do so now lay asleep or dead. Corypheus was dead at Sulahn’nehn’s vengeful hand, and his brethren lay asleep in his proud folly. And the key to the Eluvian itself still lay in the hand of the one he loved most, who he had caused to spurn him in his own selfish indecency.

“Solas?” came the gentle voice of his vhenan, momentarily free of the malice she had bestowed upon him in recent days. “The orb,” he said softly, his voice broken.

“I know you wanted the orb saved. I’m so sorry,” she murmured. Even in her anger, she still cared. Fen’Harel frowned in anguish. “It is not _your_ fault,” he replied sadly. He regretted so much. Allowing Corypheus to take the orb in the first place was his first misstep. Allowing himself to grow so close to the bearer of his burden was his second. And failing to retrieve the orb as soon as she cast it aside…

He placed the inert stone back on the ruined floor gingerly as he achingly returned to his feet and turned to face his love. She gazed at him kindly, but her eyebrow was raised. “There’s more, isn’t there?” she asked softly.

He shook his head in sorrow. “It was not supposed to happen this way,” he whispered ruefully.

He had planned to reveal himself to her that night, in all his glory, his orb restored. Fen’Harel, Dread Wolf. She would know him, know what he had done, and hopefully would love him enough to forgive him for everything. He would have shown her true glories that night, melded the Fade into the real world as only he knew how. He would have shown her the beauty hidden behind the Eluvians, the true glories of the hidden memories of Arlathan. She would be his again.

“No matter what comes, I want you to know that what we had was real,” he said softly, hesitantly. He still needed the key, but he could do little to use it without his power. He had to find some other way to open the Eluvian, now. His task was too great to put his love ahead of his duty. He had to restore his people, to undo his own mistakes. He had to seek help. Only one source of power great enough still lay dormant, to his knowledge, and she had demonstrated her will so recently. It was time to seek the help of his old friend, no matter what it did to him.

“Inquisitor? Are you alive?” shouted Cassandra. Their gathered companions had begun to approach Sulahn’nehn in concern. Fen’Harel quietly watched his strong, beautiful love approach her followers with determination as her focus shifted to her role as a leader. It took all his might to turn away from her to return to his own path.

He knew where to find her, but the path was rendered difficult by time. He could not risk returning to Skyhold, not while _she_ remained there to tempt him from his goal. He returned furtively to the Temple of Mythal, where he knew one great Eluvian still lay dormant, the path already unlocked by their recent forays.

As he stepped into the great in-between, the grey mist around him blossomed into life at his presence. This land had gone too long without elves. He stepped slowly, sorrowfully, through the great plain, observing the shattered mirrors that lay around him. So much here had been lost to time.

As Fen’Harel approached his destination, great statues of a dragon prostrating itself to a wolf came into view. His ancient meeting place with his old friend, who had long praised his thirst for freedom. He saw her in the distance, great horns framing her wizened features as she expectantly thrust parts of her own spirit into the eluvian that lay ahead.

“I knew you would come,” said Mythal softly, turning to face him. “You should not have given your orb to Corypheus, Dread Wolf.”

“I was too weak to unlock it after my slumber,” he said sorrowfully, bowing his head in shame. They both knew what was to come. They had agreed upon this mutually, so long ago; he would have done the same for her, had the world required it. “The failure was mine. I should pay the price.” His voice cracked in anguish. “But the People… they need me.”

It fell upon him to fix his grave error. Mythal was powerful, but she did not know this magic. This was his task to complete, but he no longer had the means to do so on his own. He had to take her power. He knew she understood, but his heart grew heavy. “I am so sorry,” he whispered, bowing his head as his old friend caressed his face reassuringly.

“I am sorry as well, old friend,” Mythal whispered, as her power began to flow from her fingers to his mind. Fen’Harel felt a familiar surge of might as the power of Mythal began to fill him, his face aglow. The transfer complete, Mythal gave a painful gasp as her form began to decay and harden, becoming no different from the husk of his orb he had held a few days ago. He held her tenderly and sorrowfully as her strength and will filled him. He was ready.

The transfer was difficult, at first. Mythal’s will, transferred into his body, often struggled with his own; he only found respite in the Fade, where he could reason with her directly. He began his search for the final Eluvian in which he had hidden Arlathan, now lost to the ages. It had taken long enough for his servant Felassan to open the Eluvians in the first place; now, he was plagued by Mythal’s constant urging to return to Skyhold and give her godhood to the unwilling Morrigan.

In his searching dreams, Fen’Harel once again lost track of the ages. He trained himself to focus Mythal’s power to his old aspects, once again walking the dreams of others as freely as he once had in his search for the final Eluvian.

He finally found it in the dreams of the mage Hawke, as she remembered her travels with the Dalish elf Merrill. He observed quietly as the dream-mage argued with her dream-lover over the danger of the blighted mirror. A blighted Eluvian… it could only lead to one place. And as the invisible wolf gazed into the broken, twisted mirror, he felt a surge of hope as a dark city dimly came into view.

Reinvigorated, he returned to Skyhold to seek his key. As he travelled, he noticed the terrain had changed. Neat roads lined the plains and mountains; the land bustled with life as he had never seen it, with scores of aravels traveling through small settlements of mixed background.

Skyhold itself looked much as he remembered, its walls still crumbling in parts, though it was far more populated than before. Its courtyard had become a great marketplace, unique wares from throughout Thedas glimmering in the cold light. He recognized few of the people here. He spotted Cullen near the battlements, and quietly approached the commander.

“Solas! What a surprise! It’s been quite a while,” exclaimed the former templar amiably, extending a jovial hand. Fen’Harel smiled and shook the commander’s hand. “Indeed it has,” he replied casually. “Is the Inquisitor here, by any chance?”

The templar started in surprise. “You mean the Empress? Where have you been?” he asked in suspicion. The Empress? Empress of what? How long had it been since he left?

“I have been… ah… indisposed,” said Fen’Harel hesitantly, unwilling to reveal too much to this shemlen. Truly, had she already enacted her plans before he had time to stop them?

“I see,” replied Cullen, an eyebrow raised. “Our radiant friend lives in the new city of Atish’an now. She left me here as regent. You might want to go see her there… _if_ she’ll talk to you, after what you did to her.” The commander gave a hollow laugh and turned away as Fen’Harel stood in sorrowful silence. It would be no easy task to win her back to his side, but he needed her. More than he needed the key to the Eluvian, he needed _her_.


End file.
